Amelia Smith, Staff Writer
If you don’t know what Kickstarter is, here’s the brief run-down. Kickstarter is a website that hosts projects for crowd funding. The idea of crowd funding is simple: if you get enough people donating small (or large) amounts of money, eventually you’ll have enough money to invest in a project.
Imagine if 2,000 students gave you $10-20 each. That’s quite a bit of money. Crowd funding has been gaining in popularity steadily, funding such projects as the Veronica Mars movie to the virtual reality device Oculus Rift.
I scoured Kickstarter to find some interesting projects, all so you don’t have to!
RED FLAGS
This is a party card game designed by the same people who created SUPERFIGHT. If you’re unfamiliar with SUPERFIGHT, you should probably check that card game out as well because it’s pretty great. When crowd funding a project, it’s assuring to know that the creator has successfully delivered on a previous project.
The idea of RED FLAGS is that all of the players attempt to design the best date they can, hoping to score a point from the player whose turn it is. You select cards with descriptions to compose the possible date, with cards like “loves dogs” or “writes poetry” or “famous rapper.” Unfortunately for your carefully-constructed date, all players have to play a red flag card, which tags a negative onto your date.
Now your dog-loving, poetry-writing date also may be on death row. After all cards are played, the game encourages debate to defend your cards as the best worst date as you attempt to score that point.
If you’re a fan of Cards Against Humanity, or party games where everyone shouts at each other why they should win, RED FLAGS might be for you.
kSafe
This is a product that speaks specifically to us as college students. Do you struggle with motivation? Do I even have to ask?
The kSafe is a locking safe that will not unlock unless you meet certain goals. There’s no override to the lock, you really do have to meet your goals. How does that work? First you place whatever is tempting you into the safe (your video game controller, delicious chocolate, etc.) Then you engage the lock.
Currently there are three different types of goals programmed into the safe. The first is for physical fitness and is determined by distance traveled. You can use your phone to measure this or sync it with a fitness tracker to measure your distance. Don’t walk far enough? You will not be able to get to whatever you’ve put into the safe.
There’s also a check-in mode where you physically have to be somewhere to be able to disable the lock (the library, the gym, and so on). Or you can just go with the classic timer: study for 45 minutes before your reward becomes accessible.
If you’re the kind of person that really needs external motivation (and has a weak will), kSafe is something worth looking into.