5 Incredible Crowdfunded Indie Games

While plenty of talented indie game devs may have ground-breaking ideas most fall at the same almighty hurdle: funding. No matter whether gamers attempt to be self-funded, crowdfunded, or backed by publisher money for a passion project has always been hard to come by.

But that certainly doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Plenty of modern games have funded themselves through crowdfunding, drawing their pool from potential players smitten by the concept for their games.

Here are five of our favorite examples which prove to us that crowdfunding your indie game may just be possible yet!

1.   Undertale

If you’ve hovered around indie games at all in the past decade, chances are you’ve come across the name Undertale. This aloof title is certainly not a game that many publishers would have backed. Regardless, it turned out to be one of (if not the) most successful indie games of the 2010s, launching developer Toby Fox into the spotlight after more or less completing the entire game single-handed.

Toby Fox crowdfunded the development of Undertale, amassing the interest of 2.398 backers and raising just over $50,000. But you may be wondering how exactly Toby Fox, a then-unknown developer, manage to amass this much interest.

Well, as already stated, Undertale is a rather unique affair sporting unconventional old-school graphics, a host of memorably offbeat characters, and a killer chiptune soundtrack. In other words, the game was primed and ready to go viral. And that’s not even mentioning the game’s multiple endings which can get incredibly obtuse.

In all this game is a cult hit that rocked the world of indie gaming.

2.   Darkest Dungeon

Known by many as one of the flagships crowdfunded indie games, Darkest Dungeon had a niche audience from day one, and that’s what made it so successful on the kickstarting scene.

Darkest Dungeon is a challenging game featuring a striking gothic-inspired art style heavily influenced by the writing of H.P. Lovecraft. Sound familiar? Indeed, the game had From Software’s Souls series fans written all over it. Albeit Darkest Dungeon takes these tropes in a wholly different direction.

The original Kickstarter campaign blasted past its target of $75,000, raising a whopping $313,337 for the game’s development.

However, after raising these funds the team behind the game didn’t go silent to go and develop the project—quite the opposite. They created a vibrant community that became more and more enthused at the prospect of the game with every passing day.

Of course, Darkest Dungeon is a success because it’s an excellent game. But it’s also a success because of how its developers shared it with the world.

3.   Before Your Eyes

Before Your Eyes is an experience like no other. The game uses your webcam data to tell when you blink, integrate your biometric data into the pacing and structure of a heartfelt story about finding worth in one’s life.

Conceived in 2014 during a module at the University of Southern California, Will Hellwarth and two students teamed up to produce a prototype of a game that used blink information. This project was called Close Your, which was later presented at IndieCade, winning the Developer’s Choice Award.

With some accolades in the bag, the team decided to crowdfund for a full project in 2016 pushing the team to announce a 2017 release. However, the team struggled to find traction, until they received funding from RYOT in 2018, allowing them to commit more time and energy to get the project right while rebranding the game to Before Your Eyes.

While Before Your Eyes may not be wholly crowdfunded, the game certainly wouldn’t be with us today if it wasn’t for that all-important crowd-funding project back in 2016.

4.   Elite: Dangerous

Elite is a longstanding series, with its earlier iterations being among the most successful games of the 1980s, and some of the first to popularize the open-world format of gaming.

The founder of Frontier Developments, David Braben, was eager for the next game in the series to match the boundary-pushing achievements previously seen in the franchise. This pushed him and his team to ask kickstarted backers for a whopping $2 million to fund Elite: Dangerous.

As if by a miracle, the Kickstarter campaign ended having raised $2,079,729 from a whopping $25,681 backers. Which, at the time, was said to be the highest successfully met Kickstarter goal.

These funds allowed the team at Frontier to do exactly as Braben had wanted, making the game a one-of-a-kind space flight simulator in a 1:1 scale open world of the Milky Way.

While this certainly is out of the scope of most indie devs, it goes to show that crowdfunding isn’t just for the small fry of the gaming world. It can also help bolster established projects.

5.   Star Citizen

Star Citizen is a controversial game. Not only has it been in development for over a decade, starting in 2010, but it is still yet to be fully released.

Headed by designer Chris Roberts and touted as a spiritual successor to the 2003 game Freelancer. Star Citizen is a space simulator, FPS, and MMO all rolled into one package across its four-game modes, which have been accessible for pre-purchasers since 2015.

Chris Roberts had previous credentials in producing both Wing Commander and Freelancer, earning him some dedicated fans in the process.

But the biggest bombshell about Star Citizen isn’t its strange unreleased state nor its designer, it is the fact that, to date, the game has crowdfunded—hold onto your chair—$360,000,000. Yes. Three hundred and sixty million dollars.

This makes the project raising the second-highest crowdfunded project ever, trailing behind the blockchain EOS.

Of course, Star Citizen may not be fully playable (and may never be at this point, 6 years after its planned release date), but it is certainly one of the most notable crowdfunded games of all time.

While this array of crowdfunded indie games may be eclectic, it certainly goes to show that crowdfunding is a tried and tested way or raising funds for games that go against the grain.

If Indie Games aren’t your cup of tea, and you prefer online titles, it’s time for you to get ahead of the pack. If you’re into MMORPGs, Final Fantasy might be the right choice for you. You can buy the likes of FFXIV Gil or even an FFXIV account that lets you get a head start in the game and achieve everything faster.

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