Ex-Cryptic staffers launch crowd sourced developer, Mob Rules

A new developer with impressive industry chops is asking gamers to decide what its first project should be.

According the Gamasutra, Gamasutra, the new studio is called Mob Rules Games, and was co-founded by Rick Dakan, one of the original Cryptic team members and the designer of City of Heroes.

Dackan is joined by fellow founders Jonathan Wills, another Cryptic veteran and one-time Google software engineer, and Austin McKinley, a designer and comics artist, creator of Hell Bank Notes and No One Knows.

The team is running a Kickstarter to source the $200,000 it needs to get things off the ground, and is offering contributors the chance to have a say in the company's future.

The more you contribute, the more votes you'll have in deciding which of three prototypes Mob Rules will develop first - and on all subsequent voting occasions. Why, it's just like being a shareholder.

Details of the three prototypes follow, but hit the Kickstarter link above to see some art and watch the pitch video.

• Guerrilla Gorilla is a squad-based strategy game about ape revolutionaries fighting The Man. You must plan carefully and use ambushes and tricky maneuvers to overcome The Man’s enthralled legions with your small but zealous band of simian guerrillas.
• Haunts is an asymmetrical haunted house game, where one side plays the brave explorers and the other side plays the supernatural entities that want them gone. Light and shadow, bravery and brains all come into play in this deadly game of hide and seek.
• In The Last Second you play Zeta Cervantes, a pulp-era super-scientist whose latest invention can freeze time. In a city beset by criminal mad men she must use her few stolen seconds to alter the scene of the crime that’s about to happen, turning the bad guys against themselves and pulling the innocents out of harm’s way.