The Kickstarter crowd-sourced funding portal has proven to be a great new avenue for game developers to finance the creation of niche games that would not appeal to traditional publishers, but it also seems to be a positive resource for indie studios looking for a bit of extra funding for games that they have already been financing through other means and are well under way.

The latest high-profile project to take this approach is Grim Dawn from Crate Entertainment, a crew helmed by Arthur Bruno, who prior to this venture was the Lead Designer on defunct Iron Lore's acclaimed action RPG Titan Quest (thanks Trauma).

We’ve listened to years of feedback from the Titan Quest community and continue to do so every day on the Grim Dawn forums as we strive to improve upon past performance and make this our greatest work yet. The creation of Grim Dawn is guided by traditional design and old school sensibilities, with innovation only in the areas where we feel it truly improves the game and isn't just a gimmicky back of the box feature.

For the past two years, the Crate team have been entirely self-funding the development of Grim Dawn and now they're prospective players get in on the action.

While we could still finish a fine little game on our own, that would be rough around the edges but very fun, we believe there is a much greater potential that could be realized if we were more adequately funded and staffed. So we're hoping you can help give us some proper funding so that we can get the team together, start making faster progress and ultimately release a bigger, better game for you and everyone else.

Watch the Grim Dawn Kickstarter pitch video below, and head over to the kickstarter page if it sounds like a game you might want to get in on with DRM-free early-bird pricing.

looks purty. with the enormous fan base titan quest has this shouldn't have any trouble meeting the target.

f*** yeah, titan quest was pretty good. Will check this out later.

looks purty. with the enormous fan base titan quest has this shouldn't have any trouble meeting the target.

Yea I rkn it will hit it's target. It was at $35k when I posted this last night, as of this post it's at $64k.

Thanks Trauma, sorry for snaking the OP. Wanted to news this earlier but has been a rather busy day.

Fine by me, exposure is the goal.

I bought the game on their website way back, they're a good bunch of guys. I'll have to read what happens to people who already purchased it.

Dev diary for sound.



That are at $215k of their $280k goal atm.

Funded with 10 days to spare, you can still get in on it and get the full game for $18.

40 Hours left and they have some stretch goals they are going for.

Stretch goals:

- [UNLOCKED] $350k - Dual wielding pistols (feature tech and new animation set)
- [UNLOCKED] $360k - 25 extra pieces of unique item art
- [UNLOCKED] $375k - Additional end-game boss monster (total of 2) lurking somewhere out there in the darkness for you to find...
- [UNLOCKED] $385k - 25 more pieces of unique item art
- [UNLOCKED] $400k - A new environment set that you'll get to decide on. We'll create a thread on the Grim Dawn forums to discuss ideas with fans, then select the best ideas and create a poll for you to vote the one you want most.
- [UNLOCKED] $412k - 2 additional monster types (models and animations)
- $425k - Three large, high-level dungeons, each with its own theme and named hero monster. The dungeon entrances will randomly appear in the world.
- $450k - Savage two-handed melee weapons (includes animations and all the art required to create an entirely new item type)
- $465k - Additional end-game boss (total of 3) to encounter in some dark and dangerous corner of the world.
- $480k - New survivor town hidden in the remote wilderness for you to discover. Will include a new faction group and new quest-lines to unlock once you've gained their trust.

And a new gameplay vid focusing on melee.

Well they cruised on by all their goals and even had to add some new ones along the way. Ended up with $537,515, well over their target of $280,000.

The new goals they added and funded were;

- [UNLOCKED] $480.5k - New and higher-quality developer beer, as requested by many after the sad beer in Update #10. Surely this will help enhance the quality of all our work!
- [UNLOCKED] $490k - 2 additional monster types (models and animations) and another 25 extra pieces of unique item art
- [UNLOCKED] $500k - A new dungeon art-set with a choice of catacom... scratch that! Not exciting enough? Fans have suggesting visiting the Aetherial or Chthonic home-worlds and we're down for that! We'll post a thread on the forum to gather other ideas and then put it up to vote in a poll. ; )
- [UNLOCKED] $520k - SURVIVAL MODE! We'll create a new gameplay mode that will be free for all backers (KS or Website Pre-order). In survival mode players will fight to stay alive against increasingly difficult waves of monsters. It will release sometime after the game so as not to delay development.
- [UNLOCKED] $535k - A new faction and story-line! This stretch goal was determined by a fan poll thanks to William Potash for having the idea to run that!

Great news, they reached everything which is amazing.

amazes me there is so much free cash out there

how many thousands have these kickstarters raised now?

looks better than d3