The creators of the Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts franchises are teaming up on a joint Kickstarter marketing campaign to create non secular successors to each sequence. First noticed by RPG Site, this marketing campaign will start on August 29, and the cash donated shall be used to fund each video games. 

“Through this marketing campaign, each groups will help one another’s tasks, assist set up new alternatives, and try to succeed in the biggest variety of followers attainable,” reads a press launch for Armed Fantasia and Penny Blood.

Armed Fantasia will function the successor to Wild Arms, a JRPG sequence that started in 1996 by developer Media.Vision. Series creator Akifumi Kaneko is main growth by way of Wild Bunch Productions. Its employees consists of Wild Arms’  character designer Tomomi Sasaki and composers Michiko Naruke and Noriyasu Agematsu.

Meanwhile, Penny Blood is meant as a follow-up to 1999’s Shadow Hearts franchise from developer Sacnoth. Developing the title shall be Yukikaze, led by Shadow Hearts creator Matsuzo Machida. Like with Kaneko and Wild Bunch, the Yukikaze employees is made up Shadow Hearts veterans, together with character designer Miyako Kato and composer Yoshitaka Hirota. 

Speaking to Gematsu, a publicist for Wild Bunch and Yukikaze defined that each Kaneko and Machida had been unable to safe funding to make respective sequels for Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts, neither of which had existed because the 2000s (or in Wild Arms’ case, since a 2018 cell recreation). 

It was the success of this 12 months’s Eiyuden Chronicle as a Kickstarter recreation that impressed Kaneko and Machida to make use of crowdfunding as a approach to show there was a requirement for his or her JRPG sequence. Developed by Natsume Atari and Suidoken creator Yoshitaka Murayama, Eiyuden raised practically $4.6 million on Kickstarter, changing into the third highest-funding recreation in Kickstarter historical past behind Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and Shenmue III. 

Backers can select to donate cash in the direction of one title, or each. Both video games can even function a “combo meter” to unlock content material for each video games, although it is unclear if this merely means character skins or one thing extra substantial. 

Whenever a Kickstarter marketing campaign for a online game introduced, it solely applies to 1 recreation, and never two concurrently. With how up and down Kickstarter funding might be, particularly for video video games, it is definitely a dangerous enterprise for each studios. 

That being stated, the success of the aforementioned Eiyuden Chronicle and Bloodstained proves that there is a area of interest for Japanese video games that may fund any non secular sequels to traditional video games that make themselves identified.