I think this will only appeal to the older crowd here (and even then a niche portion of that, so a niche-niche group :P), but I wanted to share.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ihobogames/silk-1

"Silk is a tribute to the late Mike Singleton, especially his groundbreaking 1984 game The Lords of Midnight. The engine used to produce the world of Silk has an identical design to the original ‘landscaping engine’ he designed, although it uses 2D assets rendered in Unity to create a more vibrant feeling wilderness with retro roots and a contemporary lo-fi vibe. Although all the fighting and besieging of the original is certainly going to be a part of this game."

"Silk also includes more Elite-like trading and exploration - we're basically making Elite on the Ancient Silk Road. Additionally, the roster of Advisors is inspired by the Clan Ring in King of Dragon Pass. In that game, you can listen to the elders of the clan to decide what strategy to follow. In Silk, your roster of Advisors serves to offer you a set of up to four choices for every location and encounter. It’s like the party in a Japanese RPG except there’s no pre-scripted story — you decide which course of action to follow at every step of the journey. Our scripting language, SilkSpeak, is also inspired by OSL, the scripting language for King of Dragon Pass. Take a look at the extract below from the Parlay script..."

"ihobo Games is a new developer focusing on innovative, EuroBritish heirloom games. It has been set up by the award-winning game design and narrative consultancy International Hobo Ltd, best known for the games Discworld Noir, Ghost Master, and the Heretic Kingdoms franchise. Our new games wing exists to implement fresh game ideas ("Innovative") that have a British and European perspective ("EuroBritish"), and that have strong roots in the history of videogames ("Heirloom"). Our plan is to make games that honour and pay tribute to classic games – new and old – while finding novel and inventive spins on their gameplay and narrative designs. These 'heirloom games' could be retrogames, or they could simply be a means of passing the player practices of games we've loved onto a new generation. That's what great game development is about – passing something on to the future that was inspired by what we loved in the past."

Chris Batman is involved, one of the lead designers behind Discworld Noir and Ghost Master - https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,35703/. I follow him on Twitter so that's how I learned about this.

Really nice, but sadly it's only for steam (or at least only steam keys are being offered to backers) so I'm not backing...

If there was DRM-free option in general would you consider? I tweeted Chris Bateman about DRM-free -

https://twitter.com/tytbone/status/1103224990734921728

For sure. I prefer GOG, but as long as it is DRM-Free, any other option is good for me.
But I won't trust that if DRM-Free isn't clearly offered in the campaign page (preferably, since the beginning of it). I've had some bad experiences with some past KS campaigns and thus become more reluctant...
In any case, I wish them good luck with their funding. I hope we can get our hands on this game some day.

Unfortunately it looks like they can't guarantee DRM-free because they're looking for a publisher for consoles and said publisher may be resistant to DRM-free. "(DRM-free) is an option... the problem is, to get it onto consoles we need a publisher to partner with us, and they may be resistant to a DRM free version kicking around. In the FAQ on Kickstarter, I've said: 'As long as there are no external restrictions preventing us from sharing a DRM-free version with backers, we will include access to a DRM-free build on all the retro cassette USBs'. I would love to support the DRM-free community (and Steam resisters!) if we can, but I don't fancy putting a game on console without QA support, and we need a publisher for that. Hope that makes sense!"

It makes "sense" that they want to have their cake and eat it too, but I have to say I am disappointed to hear this. The old-school way was about complete experiences you could own (or effectively own). Not about using a rental service or having to buy a console to have a physical version that you can at least possess albeit it is still effectively DRMed. Ymmv, but it is enough for me to call into question how authentic the game experience of the game itself will feel. If they wanted to honor classic games, find a way to release their game DRM-free, and I mean as a main release, not as only retro cassette USBs. Otherwise to me this just comes off as lip service. Here's hoping that they do find a way to release it DRM-free though!

That's a letdown :( I'm not a huge "retrostyle" sort of gamer, but I absolutely LOVE the look of Lords of Midnight / Doomdark's Revenge. I never played LOM but I was a big fan of Doomdark - it's amazing how well it holds up and the minimalist "boardgame" beauty of the game still looks gorgeous and hugely playable.

I can't help but think this guy is totally missing his audience. It seems like something that would get panned on console and belongs on smaller "indie" storefronts.

I know you hit a larger market on console, but I just feel like most console players couldn't care less about a game like this, and maybe a lot of GoG type users would like to give it a shot. I hope attempting to wed himself to console doesn't end up killing this before it even kicks off.