ProjectMQ: the social media app for indie game studios and fans worldwide! Our mission is to connect, support, and grow the global indie gaming community.

Our 6th #IndieDev newsletter features the Artful Escape of Francis Vendetti & Kaidan. It's sponsored by Loot Interactive & Kurechii. We've been crazy busy the last few weeks, so this newsletter is a bit late. Congrats to our newsletter subscribers for winning Electronic Super Joy on Steam, donated by Loot Interactive (@LOOTInteractive). If you'd like to win cool indie games too, subscribe to our newsletter here.

Important events since our 5th newsletter: We're submitting ProjectMQ to various startup and business plan competitions this year, to win the money we need to grow ProjectMQ. Three weeks ago, ProjectMQ placed 1st, out of 72 innovative startups worldwide, in the 2016 Hatch House Open. We'll share updates about other competitions soon.

Backstory: What's For Lunch - Creative Meal Budgeting

Quick backstory summary: Malcolm and I created an awesome gaming site concept, which Avik Sogoyan made epic designs for, and Rusel DeMaria agreed to advise us on. It was an uneasy choice,but we dissolved our company's student internship program, in order to afford the registration/travel expenses for E3 2014. We were both supposed to land in LAX on Sunday at about noon, but I missed my flight, and was 3 hours late. Malcolm got tired of waiting, and took an Uber to the hotel. Once he got checked in, he asked the driver to go back to the airport and get me.

We were on a VERY tight budget, so we needed to be careful how we spent our money. There was no room for unplanned expenses (like a 2nd Uber trip from the airport to the hotel, d'oh). To save a few dollars, we decided to get creative with the meal budget. The hotel served packaged muffins, yogurt and juice for breakfast, so we made sure to stop by the office every morning. For lunch/dinner, Malcolm's wife Fern made us a large casserole dish of lasagna, and a full batch of cupcakes; he smuggled that in his suitcase from Savannah to Los Angeles.

After lasagna lunch, we called Avik to make a quick game plan for the week - see what I did there, "game plan"? Malcolm brought a bunch of business cards he and Fern designed/printed the week prior, but they weren't really eye-catching. So Avik reviewed them, and sent back some better mockups; the image above is what Avik designed for the front of the card. It was already Sunday night, so we'd have to try and get the new cards printed on Monday, which meant we needed a rental car...[to be continued in the next newsletter]

Backing Indie Dev on Kickstarter

Here's a quick update on the Kickstarter projects from our 5th newsletter:

• Unfortunately, Refuge wasn't funded. Fox Rogers, the solo dev behind Rufuge, still plans to finish the game in his spare time. Follow him on Twitter @FortnumFox for more updates.
• NOOZh successfully raised 105% of their goal, for a Storyteller/Dungeon crawler with endless levels containing mysteries, traps and puzzles. Follow the developer @Wannabe_vg on Twitter for details.

Thank you to everyone that joined us in supporting all of them! Visit their sites (by clicking on the linked text above) for updates on their games. Also, you can check our Kickstarter Profile for a full list of the 64 indie campaigns we've supported. Here are two more indie projects that we've recently backed:

Kaidan

Kaidain a community driven asymmetrical multiplayer horror game where players create and share horror stories. Scare, or BE SCARED!!!

They've raised 31% of their $75K goal so far, with 30 minutes to go.

the Artful Escape of Francis Vendetti

In the Artful Escape of Francis Vendetti, the nephew of a dead folk legend embarks on a multidimensional journey to create his stage persona. They've raised 52% of their $36K goal so far, with 60 hours to go.

If you like either (or both) of those games, please help them reach their funding goals!

FREE GAME ALERT!!!!

BADLAND, from Frogmind (@FrogmindGames) is a multi-award-winning side-scrolling action adventure game with over 30 million players worldwide. BADLAND has been praised for its innovative physics-based gameplay, deviously creative levels and stunningly atmospheric graphics and audio. BADLAND features a ton of content for its single-player and its unique single-device up-to-4 player multiplayer modes.

You can get BADLAND on iOS, Android, Windows Phone , the Amazon Store, and Blackberry

Indie Game Fan Picks

Come join in the fun! Are you playing some cool indie games we should know about? Tweet them to us, so we can retweet them to our followers. Everyone who participates will have a chance to win a FREE game, and be highlighted in our next newsletter. Thanks in advance for helping us support indie games!

Raffle for FREE Indie Game Codes

We're 4 newsletters behind, so we have to catch up, and thank our previous raffle sponsors. Electronic Super Joy was sponsored by Loot Interactive (@LOOTInteractive), and
Tiny Guardians was sponsored by Kurechii (@kurechii). Please follow them to thank them for donating codes to us. Learn more about their games below.

Electronic Super Joy

Electronic Super Joy is a brutally hard platformer set in a world of pulse-pounding electronic music. Run, jump, smash & fly your way through 45+ weird & different levels, with low-gravity, world rotation, giant monsters & swarming missiles.

Tiny Guardians

Tiny Guardians is a tower defense game without towers. Prepare to embark on an epic adventure with tiny heroes in this tower defense game with a twist! Summon unique guardians to defend Lunalie against various enemies as she journeys through the wilderness of Prism.

ProjectMQ Dev Update

Here's a quick summary of the recent progress we've made with ProjectMQ:

• Added "Online Status" feature, so you can see who's logged in.
• Added game media overlay buttons for viewing or editing game media.
• Implemented search engine, so games can be searched by name, tags, and studio

Sneak Preview in March

We ran our 3rd preview a few weeks ago, and it was another success! Thank you to everyone who signed in from the 30+ countries around the world. We got a lot of constructive feedback, and we're planning another week-long preview in April.

To be part of the next preview, answer 5 short multiple-choice questions from our pilot survey: bit.ly/ProjectMQSurvey. THIS PART IS IMPORTANT: don't forget to include your email address. If you've already taken the survey and included your email address, you're good to go. Keep an eye out for our invite email from marcus[at]howardci[dot]net or malcolm[at]howardci[dot]net.

Next Time, On DragonballProjectMQ(Z)…

• E3 2014: Day One
• Big Announcement: A Cool Business Partnership
• More Startup Momentum: Updates on Other Competitions

Thanks,
Marcus and Malcolm

P.S. A few people took our survey, but unfortunately didn't see our email about the March preview. We'll be sending you user credentials from marcus[at]howardci[dot]net and malcolm[at]howardci[dot]net. Make sure to whitelist our emails, so you don't miss out.

P.S.S. Don't forget to share the survey link with your friends. #SharingIsCaring

P.S.S.S. As always, your feedback is encouraged and appreciated.