Dino the Dark Dragon has started working on a new game, Wisps of Mantis, which he describes as an ASCII console game. Moreover, he has set up a Patreon page to support development of this project:

Hi! My name is Daniel, and I’m currently developing a game called Wisps of Mantis. It’s just a .NET Core console app with ASCII art, designed as a sort of tower defence game but focused around special abilities of the player rather than construction.

I chose this approach and technology because:

1. I always wanted to make games, but have always been hindered by lack of time, complexity of modern game engines, and a lack of creative skills (e.g. art and sound).
2. It allows me to focus on the game mechanics.
3. Building a simple game engine takes way less time than learning a modern game engine.
4. You can add features and build your game really quickly.
5. You can iterate quickly and fail fast. Your first 10 games will suck, so you want to get them out of the way as soon as possible.
6. You’re a lot more likely to have at least a working demo than if you spent a year with a proper game engine.
7. The skills you learn are portable, so you can reuse them when you learn other game engines.
8. It’s a revival of the lone developer making a game. You don’t need a whole team with expertise in 2D and 3D art, sound, game design etc. That’s nice to have, but you can still learn to make games if you’re on your own.
9. It’s cross-platform!

This is working because within five evenings of development, the game already had basic terrain, player movement and three abilities (shooting projectiles, teleport, and force field), shooting in arbitrary directions, collision detection, and monster movement via pathfinding.

Rewards for backing the project include early access to technical articles about the game’s development, early access to demos, and (for higher-level backers) personalized in-game content.