In this tumultuous economy, it isn’t always easy to get a company started. Josh Fairhurst , an N.C . State alumn in computer science, took his chances founding Mighty Rabbit Studios, a company focused on making mobile games. He is currently the lead developer for the company.

Upon receiving funding from Joystick Labs, a game development incubator program, Fairhurst was able to start gathering employees and resources to begin work on their biggest project yet: Saturday Morning RPG, an episodic role-playing game set in a world inspired by 1980s Saturday morning cartoons.

While the company has created other games in the past, they were precursory projects to allow them to continue work on Saturday Morning RPG.

“It’s something that we envision to be completely different than what is out there in the app store,” Ben Moore, marketing director at Mighty Rabbit, said. “I was playing it the other day, and even after playing it hundreds of time, it’s just awesome.”

“We put as many pop-culture references as we can cram into a Japanese-style RPG. It’s really cool. We are really excited about it,” Fairhurst said. “We really hope it will accelerate us into the upper leagues of indie developers.”

“I just came on three months ago and every month something new is there, and I enjoy it more and more. I’m the one that programmed it, and I’m having fun,” Kurt Hasian , University alumn in computer science and programmer for Mighty Rabbit, said.

In an effort to help the funding of the game and the company’s future, Mighty Rabbit turned to Kickstarter.com , a website that helps small businesses get crowd funding from interested people. Companies can accept pledges and provide rewards for those who help.

“Being a small company, you don’t have the money to set aside, especially for marketing,” Moore said. “So that’s been a real challenge.”

However, their launch date created an inconvenience. Double Fine Productions, another gaming company known for creating Psychonauts , launched their campaign on the site two hours prior. Being a more well-known company, they have dwarfed much of the others on the website by raising $1.6 million.

Mighty Rabbit has progressed to almost $1,700 of their $6,000 goal, but they are concerned that the Double Fine campaign will create more problems for small businesses trying to use Kickstarter .

“Whereas in the past, we possibly could have gotten our game to the front page of Kickstarter , we had this huge project that is going to be there for the entire duration of our own campaign,” Moore said.

“Everybody is paying attention to that and none of the smaller campaigns. Which is hard for us,” Fairhurst said. “It’s a double-edged sword. It’s for marketing and to help us survive as a company.”

Moore points out that Mighty Rabbit is not alone in their problem, and other small businesses and game companies are being pushed aside with the overpowering hype of the larger company’s project.

“Our debate is, are we going to see an instant snap-back where other big companies are going to try to come on and do a Kickstart campaign to see how much money they raise. The issue with that being that could potentially pull away from the crowd funding ideas that these sites originally…[aimed] at to support the small guys,” Moore said.

Despite these concerns, Moore believes that when it comes to local businesses, Raleigh is going in the right direction. With a strong support for entrepreneurial enterprises, companies such as Mighty Rabbit can stand out alongside the larger game companies that exist in the triangle area, such as Epic Games and Insomniac Games.

“There is a really strong growing development community in the North Carolina area,” Moore said. “[Raleigh] is trying to keep a strong economy here, and you feel like there is so much money now in starting a studio… they’re doing a big push for it with tax incentives and tax breaks to come here and start.”

“The big studios have been so supportive of us. We have friends at Red Storm, Epic and Insomniac now,” Fairhurst said. “This area is just so supportive to new developers on the whole. It’s a fantastic area to be in.”

Mighty Rabbit also helps to foster local game development and works with other local studios. They helped to start GameOn , which allows companies and fans to interact and share their games. They get together at a local bar and exchange feedback and vote on favorites.

“[We want to be] without the nuances of non-disclosure agreements… we are trying to foster an environment where people are very open to talking about what they’re working on,” Moore said.

“In the indie games scene, at least around this area, we’re very friendly with each other, so we let everybody see what we’re working on… and the other companies are the same way. We wanted to try and put a hole in that secrecy that the game industry at large aims to holds in tact,” Fairhurst said.

The initial episode, to be released on March 26, will be free, but the continuations will be $1.99 each. Players will be able to transfer their character and items over between episodes. It will be available on both Apple and Android devices.