As Bob Dylan once said “Times are A-changing”. This is true for the video game industry today, we are seeing bigger and more ambitious projects being crowdfunded on Kickstarter and today we will take a look at the biggest projects yet.
11- Star Citizen (34,397 backers pledged $2,134,374)
Star Citizen is sincerely a game that we’ve all been looking forward since videogames where invented. We knew for sure that one day we would be able to travel a seemingly infinite galaxy, trading resources, being a good guy or a bad guy, amassing money or just being a trooper somewhere. This is a tall order, seems almost something that you could accomplish by playing a pen and paper roleplay game but we were not sure that the day would come that something so complex could be created in a videogame. Well your wait is over, Star Citizen promises to be all that and more; you can finally live out all of your Star trek, Star Wars or Dune dreams. If you’re looking for a comparison think a combination of World of Warcraft and E.V.E. Online. You can already play a portion of this game, you can head to the developers webpage and learn more.
10- Elite: Dangerous (25.681 backers pledged £1,578,316)
In the same vein, we have this next one “Elite: Dangerous” which describes itself as a massive multiplayer space epic. The good thing about Elite: Dangerous is that you can go ahead and play it right now. This game was successfully backed in 2012 and has been out for almost a year now on PC and Xbox platforms, with a PS4 TBD date. The concept is very similar to Star Citizen, although less ambitious I would say. This game seems way more in line to what you would experience if you played E.V.E. Online before. All in all worth checking out if you’re into space trading and spaceships.
9- BATTLETECH (41.733 backers pledged $2,785,537)
Do you like Mechs? Do you like turn based tactical games? (Think Xcom or even Civilization) Do you like a deep lore that’s been almost 30 years in the making from the makers of Shadowrun? If the answer is yes to all of these questions, and it should be, you will be looking forward to BATTLETECH. Harebrained games really has it down when it comes to creating good games, although sometimes hard like Shadowrun, but if you like a challenge this should be no issue. The lore seems interesting enough to give it a whirl, and the gameplay looks to be promising. All in all we have 1 more year to look forward to this project coming out, so be on the lookout if this is something that you would check out.
8-Wasteland 2 (61.290 backers pledged $2,933,252)
A blast from the past, wasteland 2 makes a comeback with its predecessor being released almost 30 years ago. Wasteland 1 was made by Interplay back in the day and should ring a bell if you were ever into PC games back in the day, think fallout before fallout (the creators of Wasteland actually made Fallout 1 and 2 as well). The game mainly was a hit because there had never been an RPG that was so complex before; the original wasteland had all this decisions, that you might recognize in games like Fallout and Skyrim now, that affect the outcome of the game, truly an advanced concept for 1988. All of this and way more is back with Wasteland 2. If you’re into Fallout, American RPG’s or just a great experience in general check out Wasteland 2, it’s already out!
7-Yooka-Laylee (73.206 backers pledged £2,090,104)
Remember back in the day when the N64 use to be all that, and when people used phrases like all that? Remember when Rareware was king and games like Donkey Kong 64, Conquer’s Bad Fur Day and Banjo Kazooie used to be the bomb? Well quit reminiscing and get ready for Yooka-Laylee. The game is in all ways a spiritual and almost blatant rip off of the concept of Banjo Kazooie, which might seem like an insult at first, but it truly isn’t since this game is being made by the guys that made Banjo Kazooie back in the day, I’m sure that they would do another Banjo Kazooie if they could but since Rare is owned by Microsoft now that’s a pretty tall order (please let us forget about that atrocious nuts and bolts game for the 360). So in comes Yooka-Laylee, a game that has the graphics, the music, the gameplay and even almost the same in game sounds as a Banjo Kazooie game but in 2016. Can you dig it? I sure can and I’m looking forward to the release of this game in just a few months!
6- Double Fine Adventures (“Broken Age”) (87.142 backers pledged $3,336,337)
Back in the day there used to be a lot of point and click adventure games, from Maniac Mansion to the famous Monkey Island series. Tim Schafer is the mastermind behind many of these games, like almost all of them, and he’s back with Double Fine Adventures. Double fine Adventures is not a game in itself, the game that came from this Kickstarter is called “Broken Age” and it’s a point and click adventure made by the genius Tim Schafer and his team. Double Fine Adventures is actually a documentary series that captures how the game was made, $100,000 where allotted to the documentary and $300,000 to the game itself. Both the documentary and the game are worth checking out, I would like to speak more about the story of the game itself, but I feel like the amount of people that will actually invest the time into a point and click adventure deserve to have the reward that is jumping in without knowing anything, so just trust me on this one and go but it!
5- Mighty Number 9 (67.226 backers pledged $3,845,170)
Keiji Inafune, the creator of the character Megaman, left Capcom and made his own company. He promised a new game with all of the good things that the Megaman fans deserved (think almost of Yooka-Laylee) but he forgot that the game is more than just character design and needed actual programmers; this is where Mighty Number 9 met its demise. With a very difficult release, being delayed almost 2 years, Mighty Number 9 came out to a bunch of angry backers that trashed the game for being a very bad game; almost focusing on everything that didn’t mattered in the Megaman series. With almost as much cut scenes as gameplay, the game lacks the tight and awesome controls that Megaman had. It’s by no means the worst game ever made, but it was a stab in the heart to a lot of diehard Megaman fans that felt cheated by Mr. Inafune. This is a game that portraits clearly why crowdfunding can be a dangerous thing, but let’s hope that the good game developers outnumber the bad by a lot. If you want to play this game you can do so right now, since it’s out on almost all consoles and Steam, just be sure to have your expectations set correctly.
4- Pillars of Eternity (73.986 backers pledged $3,986,929)
Pillars of Eternity is a top down isometric RPG made by Obsidian entertainment, a company made of veterans that worked on games such as Baldur’s gate, Planescape: Torment and Neverwinter Nights. If you’re over 20 and have owned a computer since you were younger you’re already probably exited at the mere sight of those titles and you should be, because Pillars of Eternity is yet another spiritual successor on this list. Made in the likeness of Baldur’s Gate, this game brings back the epicness with full force. This game is a complete throwback to the late 1990´s and early 2000’s and the best thing about it is that you can play it right now! Go buy it if you spent more than 100 hours playing Baldur’s Gate like me, there should be no excuse.
3- Torment: Tides of Numenera (74.405 backers pledged $4,188,927)
We’re going to double down with inXile in this article, after bringing back the legendary Wasteland and making an awesome game, inXile has decided to bring back another classic: Planescape Torment. Now, while they don’t have the rights to the name, they have the experience and the crowd support to do this task, and that’s what they have done with Torment: Tides of Numenera, again, if you remember spending hours playing either P: T, Fallout 1 and 2, Baldur’s gate, Neverwinter Nights and hell, why not, even Diablo 1 and 2, you need to do yourself a favor and check out this game, it’s on early access on steam right now!
2- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (64.867 backers pledged $5,545,991)
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a combination of many things, Koji Igarashi, being the godfather of Castlevania and the Metroidvania style of games (that being gothic horror theme combined with a non-linear map and rooms and powerups being scattered all over) has made sure to combine everything he likes, anime, cool looking stuff, gothic horror and Metroidvania style gameplay. If you like games like Super Metroid Prime or Castelvania: Symphony of the night I would be looking forward to this game. B: RotN is supposed to come out next year on all current gen consoles and Steam.
1- Shenmue 3 (69.320 backers pledged $6,333,295)
Now, this one to me is one of the greatest (if not the best) examples of why crowdfunding is a thing of beauty. There is no lack of old publishers and nostalgic fans on this list, but if you would have told me last year that someone was going to give Yu Suzuki 6 million dollars to make Shenmue 3 I would have probably ask you to go and see a psychiatrist. A niche game that sold poorly on one of the least successful console’s ever (the dreamcast) had little to no chance of ever being back, with fans left adrift thinking of the alternative reality where the Dreamcast was a hit and Sega kept on making consoles. Well it appears that the tides have changed and almost 15 years later we will finally get to see what happened with Ryo Hazuki. With a slogan of “For the fans by the Fans” Mr. Suzuki will finally get a chance to finish this awesome game, and it’s all thanks to Kickstarter, but more importantly, to the Fans!
Today we’ve learned that there is hope out there for old games and fans. What Kickstarter and this relentless artists have accomplished was something that would have been deemed impossible just some years ago. The world of Kickstarter is young but I’m certain that this is a good thing; we’re going to keep seeing these projects made for the fans and the gaming industry will have a second wind.
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