An indie game based on Winsor McCay's groundbreaking comic strip.
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Hey there backers,
We've received multiple messages about accessing pledge management, add-ons, etc. from the mobile app. It seems that the mobile app or page gets stuck on the add-on screen and won't stop loading. We've reached out to Kickstarter about the issue and are hoping to have it resolved in the next day or so. Until then, please use a web browser on a computer to access the site or make any adjustments, as that is still working properly.
Many apologies for the inconvenience,
Team Nemo
P.S. Thank you also to the backers who brought this to our attention and helped us figure this out!
Happy Sunday everyone! It's time for another Sunday Funnies, where we explore aspects of Winsor McCay's original Little Nemo in Slumberland comics!
This is a really important one for us because it gets to the heart of WHY we're making this game. Apart from liking the Little Nemo comics, movie, and NES game a lot, we're also keenly aware of the impact that Little Nemo had on popular culture. That's right, this isn't an article about Little Nemo references in pop culture, but rather examples from pop culture that were inspired by these important comics and how. For this reason, making this game is as much an act of art preservation for us (by revisiting a classic piece of media) as it is making a cool video game.
(Note - one of the comics below contains Impie, so content warning for not-okay 1910's racial stereotyping.)
We've covered McCay's amazing artistic talent, but it should also be acknowledged that Little Nemo in Slumberland was the right comic for the right time. The comics supplement was an important piece of entertainment for readers (especially immigrant communities) in a world without constant mass-media exposure. Comic strips took up whole pages and could even be a selling point for a whole paper. In this way, McCay's comics rose above many of their rivals with their vibrant colors, richly illustrated landscapes, and serialized stories.
This allowed Little Nemo to be a popular sensation at the time. The comics were merchandised heavily on Valentines Cards, in advertisements, and even as a Broadway Musical! McCay's Little Nemo-based works (like his 1911 animated cartoon) and subsequent work like Gertie the Dinosaur were also huge sensations, and influenced creators throughout the 20th Century such as Walt Disney (a noted fan of Gertie) and Maurice Sendak (whose book Into the Night Kitchen is very directly inspired by Nemo), among others.
As himself a force of pop culture, comics, cartoons, movies, television, and video games that came after McCay would see frequent references to Little Nemo and other works. Scenes from Little Nemo pop up in everything form Sesame Street to Star Wars. One of my favorite examples is the April 6, 1913 comic of Little Nemo in the Land of Wonderful Dreams (the comic's name after McCay was hired by William Randolph Hearst's New York American), where the gang visits the Lilliput of Gulliver's Travels. Flip, thinking that a rock has been thrown at his head by a passing Lilliputian airplane, climbs a building and snatches the plane from the sky.
It's hard to see this and not think of the 1933 film King Kong, which includes the famous scene of the titular monster climbing the Empire State Building for a last stand with attacking airplanes.
Author Ulrich Merkl even goes as far as crediting McCay with the concept of kaiju entirely, with how often he depicted giant, often prehistoric, beasts stomping around cities. In his book Dinomania, he looks at McCay's later comic Dino, made in the 1930's, which features a lot of this kind of content.
The 1910 story arc of Nemo visiting Mars has even more examples of scenes that would find their way into later works of pop culture.
The Mars story arc also features the plot point that air to breathe costs money on the planet - in one storyline McCay predicts scenes from both Star Wars and its parody, Spaceballs!
We of course can't forget the famous Walking Bed episode of July 26, 1908: perhaps the quintessential Little Nemo strip. References to this comic have appeared in everything from Google Doodles, to Sesame Street (in the intro to the "Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures" segment), and even on Adventure Time!
Video games are one area where McCay's reach is less directly felt...or is it? On one hand, there are 2 previous Little Nemo games by Capcom - Little Nemo the Dream Master for the NES and Nemo for the Arcade, both inspired by the 1989 movie by Tokyo Movie Shinsha. As expressions of McCay's work they're a little mixed. They both pull heavily from the movie's plot rather than the comics, but feature some areas directly inspired by the comics like the NES game's Topsy Turvy level, inspired by Befuddle Hall.
Beyond these examples, McCay may not have directly inspired video games, but he inspired works that eventually inspired video games. This becomes very important if you consider the structure of many video game levels. In most levels, there is a theme (or biome) that the designer uses to give the level's action a setting (forest, lava, ice, castle, etc.) In good level design, the level itself sticks to a concise set of actions or mechanics: basically, as a designer you want to stick to a few key elements rather than throwing everything at the player.
McCay showed the same steady hand in his comics: each Nemo comic highlights a specific setting and concept. The strips, even when part of a larger arc, have their own identifying mechanical element: the way that the panels are used or the situation Nemo finds himself in, or both!
Many Nemo comics follow this pattern too: with Nemo navigating a setting in a novel way (riding a horse, crossing a bridge held up by guardians, etc.) then him being challenged and often failing. Over the course of the comic, we see Nemo become more and more capable, until he has mastery of his surroundings in Slumberland. Practice makes perfect!
That's it for this edition of the Sunday Funnies! We hope you enjoyed these examples where Nemo inspired the pop culture landscape that we have today.
One more thing - we're entering our final 10 days of the campaign and need your help getting across the finish line! Here are a few ways you can help:
That's all for today! We say this every time but we can't express this enough: thank you for believing in this project and helping us make it a reality. It means the world to us and we'll do our best to make you proud!
See you in the funny papers!
Chris and Team Nemo
Hey, it’s Ben! I wanted to drop a quick update about what we’re planning as far as overall game structure, and how it might affect things like Speedrunning. I personally love watching speed runs and am super excited to see how players might tackle Nemo. We’re trying to build in features and an overall game structure that allows this along with, of course, a more laid-back mode of play where you can soak in the story, environments, and art. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about...
First off, thank you everyone for your support! It really means the world to us. We’re nearly ¾ of the way funded and though we still have a long way to go there’s a light at the end of the tunnel! We opened up some add-ons if you’re interested in a particular item. And make sure to help spread the word about this game. We don’t have a large marketing budget so we’re relying on our supporters to help spread the Nemo love!
Metroidvania?
While Nemo isn’t exactly a Metroidvania game, it takes its cues from the genre. We have likened the game more to Demon’s Crest in its structure (in my opinion, an underrepresented genre). You start with Nemo and his basic set of skills, and you will meet your friends as you play through the game. Like Demon’s Crest, this will give you access to new areas of the game where you’ll find upgrades and items that allow you to progress. At its very basics, Flip and Peony give you vertical traversal and Princess and Nemo allow horizontal traversal.
Each level has a branching set of goals, and you can revisit levels with the skills you’ve unlocked to find new areas. We expect most players will go through the regular item and skill gates, but we anticipate and encourage speedrunning the game as well.
Emergent Behavior
The game uses a physics system that has a lot of room for emergent behavior. Most of the character’s primary skills involve expanding the player’s traversal of their environment (Flip swings, Peony climbs, Princess floats, and Nemo glides) and because all of these skills can be chained together, we’re expecting especially skilled players to be able to skip items and find alternate routes through the game.
Because these skills affect the physics of the characters, stack, and are designed to do so, we expect players to find sequence breaks in clever ways we don’t expect.
Speed Running Features
We are adding features that make speed-running the game easy, beyond basic sequence breaking. We have a quick travel system in the game in Bosco, who will let you quickly travel around levels. We will have an in-game timer, and of course, will allow you to skip story sequences.
We also want to make the game’s goals flexible enough to offer several different types of runs. Our first stretch goal is the Kitchen goal, which allows Nemo to eat different food before bedtime to set your game up to be easier or more difficult. If you want to try an especially difficult run you can set it up
We actually had some discussions around this recently and are looking at ways to easily set up practice runs, and do things like replay bosses. If you like speedrunning and have any suggestions, let us know how we can make your life easier and things like streams more fun to watch!
Thanks again!
- Ben and Team Nemo
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