Dizzy Returns designers defend their decision to crowdfund on Kickstarter

In their second update on Kickstarter, the Oliver twins defend their decision to crowdfund 350,000 British pounds to develop Dizzy Returns, a PC and iOS title that sees the return of the popular series after 20 years.

Writing on the Dizzy Returns Kickstarter page, Andrew and Philip Oliver, who currently are head of Blitz Games Studios in the U.K., acknowledge their funding goal "sounds like a lot of money to develop a game" at first glance.

"Saying that, teams of hundreds of people at large studios create AAA titles for consoles and PC and spend tens of millions of dollars in the process" the post reads. "It's also true that games can be made on a much smaller budget. There are independent developers creating mobile games for a fraction of that cost, sometimes individually or in small teams of just a handful of people.

"Our company, Blitz Games Studios, is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes, employing over 200 talented and creative people, with game teams typically made up of anywhere between 10 and 70 people."

According to the developers, the 350,000 pound goal will allow the team to provide "hours of satisfying and rewarding gameplay."

"At its very simplest the cost of making any game is a combination of content, people and time; the more content there is in a game, the more people working on it and the more time spent adding and polishing features will always mean a higher cost. We believe that £350,000 is a realistic amount that reflects the number of people, the amount of time, and the amount of content we want to dedicate to Dizzy Returns."

A team of 12 is being assembled to work on the development of the title over the course of six months. It will be over five times larger than the original games in the series and will feature at least 10 in-game environments arranged around a single central hub. A version of PC and iOS will be developed simultaneously and feature the same content across both platforms. The title will also feature over 200 puzzles which will combine physics-based puzzles, light-based puzzles and time-based puzzles. Blitz Games is aiming to offer "console quality" with 3D characters and full 3D animation.

Following last week's announcement of the return of Dizzy many Kickstarter users commented on the ethics of using crowdfunding to source funds for an already popular and successful games series. As of press time Dizzy Returns has reached 16,965 British pounds of its 350,000 goal.