The Kickstarter fundraising campaign for Suikoden spiritual successor Eiyuden Chronicle recently wrapped up, earning the developers enough to make it the third-most successful campaign ever for a video game. It seemed clear right from the beginning that Eiyuden Chronicle’s campaign would be a big one when traffic to the page crashed Kickstarter during the first day of fundraising.
While nothing could match the success of Eiyuden Chronicle’s first day of fundraising, the game continued to smash through stretch goals for the length of the campaign. After reaching its initial goal within a matter of hours, Eiyuden Chronicle met every stretch goal the developer could come up with until the very end, earning the game lots of new playable characters, minigames, languages, console ports, and even several DLC releases. Along the way, developer Rabbit & Bear Studios posted updates including a look at the game’s battle system, which takes cues from its predecessor, Suikoden.
With its campaign now finished, Eiyuden Chronicle is the third-most successful game ever on Kickstarter. It raised more than $4.5 million dollars during its campaign, which is more than nine times its original funding goal. The only video games ever to earn more during a Kickstarter campaign are Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - which raised $5.5 million - and Shenmue 3 - which raised $6.3 million. Rabbit & Bear closed out the month-long fundraising campaign with a livestream and says it took the next day off to rest.
Of course, a successful Kickstarter campaign is just the beginning for a crowdfunded game. The developers of projects such as Mighty No. 9 and even Shenmue 3 can attest to that. Despite their successful crowdfunding campaigns, these games and many others have failed to deliver what players expected, even with budgets much larger than their developers originally planned to have on hand. With a development team stacked with veterans of Suikoden and other classic RPGs, though, Eiyuden Chronicle looks like it’s headed for great things, if the team can manage the now vastly expanded scope of its game. In any case, it has until Eiyuden Chronicle’s projected release in 2021 to figure it out.
Fans of classic RPGs have been waiting a long time to get their hands on another Suikoden game. While Eiyuden Chronicle isn’t exactly that, both its connection to the original team and the developer’s early plans make it clear that fans of the PlayStation series may finally be in for the sequel they’ve been waiting for in all but name.