Gaming
Games
Running through the 9 best Kickstarter games of all time
These games are amazing, but they may never have been made at all if not for the fans. These are the best Kickstarter games.
Game development is a tricky thing. That may seem like the understatement of the year, but if you have a phenomenal idea but the person you’re pitching it to doesn’t see it that way, what do you do? Many indie developers make great games, of course, but there’s another way to make it big. Nearly ten years ago, Kickstarter came to be. Here, ideas could be pitched to the whole internet and if enough people like something, it could be made.
Crowd-funding was new back then, but while some of the pitched games may still not be out yet, or perhaps some had the water muddied by part-backing here and part-backing there, there are some games which went on to phenomenal success thanks to the quality of the product. These are the very best games Kickstarter helped create, all thanks to the fans who believed in the ideas in the first place.
1. Broken Age
One of the biggest and most highly regarded of the early Kickstarter efforts, Double Fine’s Broken Age is a beautiful point and click adventure with an all-star cast that included Elijah Wood (and that was before he got heavily into being in games via Ubisoft, but after his The Lord of the Rings fame), Jennifer Hale, and Double Fine-associate, Jack Black (he of Brutal Legend fame, among other things). An incredible success, 87,142 backers got the game made with nearly $3.5 million; so popular was this one that it even spawned a documentary on the process which we’d heartily recommend you seek out.
2. Shovel Knight
While 2013 seems an eternity ago, Yacht Club Games’ $311,502 from 14,749 backers spawned a game that’s still being updated with new content to this very day. On top of being just an incredible retro-styled platformer, Shovel Knight himself has appeared in other games (Yooka-Laylee, which we’ll come to later) but also has the honour of being one of the very first non-Nintendo characters to have an amiibo released. In fact, there’s a three-pack of amiibo still due in 2019 that is to be released to coincide with the two new content packs, King of Cards and Showdown. Shovel Knight for Smash, anyone?
3. FTL
Given how uproarious the praise for Subset Games’ second title, Into the Breach was, it’s easy to forget that the dev-duo’s first game, FTL: Faster Than Light started life on Kickstarter. Nearly 10,000 people pledged shy of a quarter of a million US dollars to bring FTL to life, and we’d have to say it was worth it. FTL is a rogue-like spaceship simulator that has you quite literally putting out fires as you multitask your way to success while exploring the unknown. In retrospect, that $200,000 seems like a steal to have made such a phenomenal game.
4. The Banner Saga
Stoic Games’ trilogy may be in the record books now, but so high quality were the three story-driven, turn-based strategy titles, that the games industry is waiting with baited breath to see what the talented team does next. Starting on PC (as many Kickstarter games do), the original game went to Xbox, PS4, and even Nintendo Switch, but it all started life with 20,042 pledges that raised the $723,886 to help make the 2014 game that eventually even made it to iOS devices.
5. Wasteland 2
More recently, you’d be forgiven for thinking the developers’ name “inXile entertainment” was because of the huge acquisition deals Microsoft announced in 2019. It’s no shock that the Xbox makers scooped up inXile while they were signing on studios to make games for them, because Wasteland is a series beloved by fans. A large part of this is due to the name Brian Fargo, the director of the game who’s also known for founding Interplay, as well as being part of the creation of Bard’s Tale and, of course, the original Wasteland – all the way back in 1988. Hugely successful, Wasteland 2’s Kickstarter raised just shy of $3 million from 61,290 people. Incredible.
6. Divinity: Original Sin
So successful was Divinity: Original Sin, Larian Studios’ RPG, that the second game smashed it on Kickstarter, too. Released in 2014 to massive critical acclaim, it was rare for a game so designed for PC to see such success on consoles, and Microsoft were so keen to get a piece of the pie that, with publisher Bandai Namco, the sequel went into Xbox Game Preview. The two games together have been backed by over 60 thousand fans for a combined total of over $3 million.
7. Yooka-Laylee
There are lots of games that pay homage to titles of yesteryear, but none have worn their badge of honour quite as loud and proud as Yooka-Laylee. And rightly so, since developers Playtonic Games is made up of ex-Rare talent that was responsible for the Banjo-Kazooie games that people still, to this day, desperately want to see become popular again. £2,090,104 helped make this one a reality, and the team truly delivered on what was promised: Yooka-Laylee is genuinely a follow-up to the Banjo-Kazooie games, even down the cartoony and garbled speech that pervaded those original games all those years back. Before you ask: yes, it came to Switch.
8. Hyper Light Drifter
Of all the titles on our list, this is the one you may not have heard of. Heart Machine’s Hyper Light Drifter is an action-RPG that the director says is a combination of old-school Zelda and Diablo. When it hit Kickstarter it was just Alex Preston (the director), but the funding, which eventually hit $645,158, enabled him to hire a team to truly deliver on the original vision. As with most high-quality indie games, a Switch version was released in 2018, but it was originally on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The swift motion, exciting combat, and brilliant visuals are just three reasons you should absolutely try this one if you haven’t already.
9. SUPERHOT
Compared to some of our other entries, SUPERHOT Team’s game raised a pittance at $250,798 (from 11,626 backers) but for our money, it’s one of the hottest (not sorry) games on the list. A shooter-puzzler, there was nothing like this game at the time, and there’s really been nothing like it since, either. Time only moves when you move, and quickly Microsoft pounced on SUPERHOT and showed it off at an E3 conference, generating even more hype. Released in 2016 on PC and Xbox One, it’s since come to PS4, but even more excitingly, an all-new VR-version was released with new levels, which took the entire concept to new heights. There’s even a card game, now. We’d call this one a super… hot… success. OK, we are sorry for that one.
