Indie Fund Is Open For Business

What would you do if you'd made an indie game, and suddenly found yourself impressively wealthy as a result? Build a castle out of diamonds? Buy a zoo just so you can eat all the animals? Or would you create an angel investment fund so you can help other indies get their projects off the ground? That's the excellent choice that a number of successful indies (you can find out more about who in Alec's piece from March), and the Indie Fund project is now alive.

Hopeful developers can now submit their projects to Indie Fund. However, this isn't a way of getting your Diner Dash clone out the door. This is something that's aimed at investing in original, creative ideas. Indie Fund's first rule is that games must introduce something new to gaming. A big task.

Developers must also have a playable prototype, and be able to work to a sensible budget and timeframe. They're looking to fund projects that cost under $200,000 to complete, and those which show a likelihood of making a profit once finished.

Once all that's in place prospective investees should put together a video of in-game footage, and then send their submission to submissions (at) indie-fund.com, following the instructions on their site. Then hope.

The team behind it reckon they can fund five or six games over the next three years, so competition is going to be pretty tight. It also means that they should be picking the absolute cream of the crop. So if you reckon you are that cream, get your project to their attention!

You can read lots more detail about the project from their GDC talk, and there some details on the repayment model here. It seems extremely fair.

So, there it is. It's live.