When someone decides to take a franchise in a "grittier" direction, I translate that into "jump the shark". Of the few examples where that actually works would be Batman, but the odds of Star Trek: Renegade succeeding feels...middling? I will watch the kickstarter and make up my mind later about whether or not to pledge.

Ushanka. Sold!

This is super-squeaky-clean Star Trek here - just having a topless Janeway poster on set would make it grittier...

Guess people really love hats and pets, almost 21.4k now, more then 1.3K in the last 13 hours. And I agree about the PayPal, the card game and infinite tower are nice ideas

...Wow. 0_O I guess we can thank TF2 for that hat renaissance.

Nexus 2 have posted their first update promising a DRM-free release.

Two new RPG projects:

Origin - The Flood Is Coming - a sci-fi RPG with a clear Mass Effect influence, but is looking good

Katun - horror/apocalyptic future with enemies and allies created by genetic manipulation

Hm. The initial rush seems to be rather moderate. I don't know Nexus (hence the few words on my part), but from what I've seen, it looks like it could be fun - and some people here speak very highly of it. I hope they reach their goal and create an even better sequel.

For some strange reason, $15 gets you access to the closed beta, but you only get the actual finished game if you pay $30. That seems... backwards.
Sounds interesting, if a little too blatantly inspired by Mass Effect (former US soldier with generic name recruits a motley crew of dudes to fight off an invasion of mysterious robots? That sounds... vaguely familiar). The AI sounds interesting, but I'm not sure it makes sense for this type of game. Unless you're fighting the same enemy throughout the game, it doesn't really make sense that enemy AI would evolve as you play.

Katun caught my attention but they don't give enough information about the game in my opinion. I might reconsider after a couple of updates..

@gazoinks: About Origin I think it's because the ennemies are robots controlled by some sort of super computer or something like that.

Yeah, I was just thinking that. Makes more sense in that case. (Speaking of inspired by Mass Effect, I found it amusing that he featured a sex scene with a blue alien in the trailer. >.>)

And on Katun yeah, it sounds interesting. They made the strangely common mistake of having absolutely no information (or even showing the developer) in the pitch video.

Never played TF2. I just love ushankas. Imagine that girl in a humongous fluffy hat. It's like wish-fulfillment in reverse: finally, I can do in the game what I already do IRL.

Despite being American, I think I can agree that Ushankas make everything better. My guess is that it'll be a less poofy one though, like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Ushanka_of_Soldier_of_Soviet_Army-5.jpg

Presumably a fluffy hat and nothing else? ;)

Some other projects to consider:
Human Dawn (Oct 18)
Not much info aside from it being free on release.
ORBITOR (Oct 27)
"Rizon Skies: Over the Edge" Airship Sandbox Game (Oct 28)
Interesting theme, but do they really plan to add multiplayer with a funding goal of just $2000?
StarJacked : The Adventure Begins here on Kickstarter (Oct 28)
This looks like it could have potential, depending on how it updates...
Ring Runner - Flight of the Sages (Nov 12)
Looks the most promising, a mature (5 years in development) far future RPG/adventure.

Tired of oh-so-many-identikit zombie-plague-invasion games? Then how about:
Zombie Cruise - Love.Boat.Zombies! (Oct 28)
for something a little different? Leisure Suit Larry meets the Living Dead!

Finally, a hardware entry:
Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone (Oct 27)
This could have potential for creating an open-source graphics card (the biggest example of parallel processing on most systems) but that main graphic is probably going to give potential pledgers vertigo...

DEAR GOD MY EYES. MY EEEEEEYEEES.