Crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter have been great avenues for new projects like Yacht Club Games' Shovel Knight, as well as spiritual successors for popular franchises like Koji Igarashi's Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Last month, Yoshitaka Murayama and Junko Kawano launched a Kickstarter to fund a spiritual successor to Suikoden called Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, and the project recently passed $3 million in donations.
The JRPG promises to have an intricate story and huge cast of characters, literally 108 as of this writing thanks to stretch goals. It just passed $3.1 million, and thus crossed a goal to add voice acting in cutscenes on top of Eiyuden Chronicle coming to next-generation consoles. Developer Rabbit & Bear Studios announced through an update today that if it reaches $3.125 million there will be a 109th character chosen by backers.
Murayama said Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is now the "single most-backed project by Japanese people" through a press release, and it is the ninth-most-funded game in Kickstarter history according to GameSpot. That said, it will still be available to back until August 29 at 9:00 a.m. PDT.
Kickstarter has seem lots of successes in the past, including a promotional campaign for PlatinumGames to port The Wonderful 101 to modern consoles. The Suikoden successor has a lot of promise and funding, so it will be interesting to see how its development plays out over the next few years.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is tentatively slated to launch in October 2022 for PC, with plans for ports on PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Source: Kickstarter, GameSpot