Well, that took awhile. KING Art Games’ sequel to The Book of Unwritten Tales – cleverly called The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 – has just passed its $65,000 Kickstarter goal, with a mere 900-odd hours to spare.
As briefly discussed yesterday, this is a bit of an odd duck in the realm of Kickstarter projects. The game itself has already been fully funded by publisher Nordic Games; the Kickstarter is solely to add to and expand on it, with stretch goals ranging from adding projection mapping so everything looks neater (which was added in this $65,000 tier) all the way up to superior animation and facial expressions, and a full orchestral score. The next goal, at $95,000, will add in side quests (in the form of non-essential puzzles) and costumes.
What do we think about this? The fact that a published-funded game that will happen regardless of the Kickstarter’s success is, nonetheless, using Kickstarter to get more money… well, it’s a bit uncomfortable, and it’s certainly a step closer to “Big publisher attempts to crowdfund latest AAA-title” horror story that none of us are looking forward to. The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 will happen anyway, so this is kinda using pre-orders to financially vote for whether or not prettier graphics are important, but I’m still wary of any actually published game that’s using Kickstarter to get more funding. Hmm.
Hark! A video!
