The Kickstarter campaign for a new role-playing game called Torment: Tides of Numenera was launched just over 24 hours ago, and it's already broken records. A spiritual successor to the 1999 cult hit Planescape: Torment, it earned $1 million in funding in just over seven hours – breaking the record for fastest-to-$1-million previously held by the Ouya console.
Tens of thousands of gamers have already plunked down between $25 and $65 to get their hands on a copy of the game when it releases, but a surprising amount of its record-smashing funding is coming from big-time donors flinging bundles of cash in the five- and six-figure ranges at the game's publisher, inXile Entertainment.
Backer Steven Dengler says he will pledge $100,000 if the Kickstarter reaches the $3 million mark (which it will likely surpass), just for a chance to play the followup to the game he calls a "landmark" in his life.
"[Planescape] is the most rewarding game I've ever played," he told Wired in a phone interview.
Dengler, CEO of the currency conversion services site XE.com, is a prolific Kickstarter backer. As an angel investor with a passion for classic PC games, he's bankrolled Psychonauts publisher Double Fine in excess of $1 million to get new games out the door.
"The appeal of a Kickstarter is as much about rewarding people for what they've done in the past as it is helping them to create new [projects]," Dengler says.
Dengler isn't the only gamer with cash willing to throw down big for a successor to Planescape. Min-Liang Tan, CEO of gaming accessory-maker Razer, announced on Twitter that he'd donated $10,000 to Torment's campaign, saying that if the new game is "half as good as Planescape, I will die happy."
Also kicking in 10 large is Markus "Notch" Persson, creator of Minecraft, Polygon reported.
Torment publisher inXile Entertainment is not new to Kickstarter. Nearly one year ago the company raised $2.9 million in a Kickstarter campaign for Wasteland 2, a sequel to the 1988 game which would go on to become the basis for the highly successful Fallout franchise. While Wasteland 2 has not yet shipped, inXile said in a Kickstarter update that in order to keep the studio continuously operating, it had to start pre-production on a new game while the current one is still in development.
inXile founder Brian Fargo, who created games like Fallout 2 and Baldur's Gate with his previous company Interplay, understands that fans like Dengler and Tan loved Planescape: Torment largely because of its story.
"It was an RPG for connoisseurs, especially for connoisseurs of good writing," he told Wired via Skype.
Fargo says that he sees a widespread feeling amongst gamers and industry figures that role-playing games have become less literary, less intellectual and more "dumbed down." With Torment, he says, "we're bringing people back to this heavy, reactive, and very well-written role-playing game. Our audience is 30 years old, and they've been dying to get that sort of experience again."
Big backer Steven Dengler fits squarely into the demographic Fargo speaks of. He says his favorite part of Planescape was "the extent to which they were willing to let it be a work of literature inside a game."
"You could play the original Planescape: Torment almost without fighting at all. You could talk your way through the whole thing," Brian Fargo says, adding that the new Torment will follow a similar path. "Yes, there's a combat system, yes, there will be weapons, but your ability to navigate the world with your words is one of the hallmarks."
Can Torment hit that sweet spot again for fans of the game that inspired it? For now, they're betting some big money that Fargo will come through.
This story was updated after publication to give more details on the nature of Steven Dengler's $100,000 donation to the inXile Kickstarter.
