The Kickstarter campaign launched by Rabbit & Bear Studios to fund the development of the upcoming JRPG Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes has ended successfully.
As a result of the fans’ support, pledges reached a total of just over $4,571 million. This makes Eiyuden Chronicle the third most-funded game on the platform, behind Shenmue III and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.
This means that all the announced stretch goals were achieved, including the following new ones revealed during the last rush.
- Hero Mode – Plumb the depths of special randomized dungeons with your chosen party and take on unique challenges not found elsewhere in Allraan. Plan your team wisely, as certain members will be stronger against specific foes. Be careful though, because your party members will tire over time, making fights harder as you explore deeper into the unknown!
- Asynchronous Mode – At this stretch goal, you will be able to share your party and fortress town as AI-controlled data with other players, allowing them to battle your army without you even being online.
- Fortress Town Asset Pack – This set of visual assets will allow you to customize your fortress in the style of a Japanese or Chinese castle, setting you apart from the rest! This is the third piece of FREE Digital DLC for backers.
- Battle Defense Mode – At this stretch goal, invaders will periodically attack your Fortress Town as the story progresses. Build a Citadel to strengthen your walls, train defensive troops and develop weapons to protect your citizenry from those that would ransack your home.
- Another Story: Seign – In this DLC side story, you will take control of Seign in an adventure told from the empire’s point of view.
On top of that, the developer also announced the planning of a second town-creation RPG in collaboration with Natsume Atari.
This was announced and explained in an official update.
“It’s with great excitement that we announce our plans to partner with Natsume-Atari to create an Town Creation RPG. Natsume is known for the Harvest Moon series. Natsume Atari has done some great pixel based games like Ninja Warriors and Wild Guns.
So what is THIS? We are still very, very early in the planning stages so there is a lot we cannot commit to. However, these are the current thoughts:”
- It will release before the main game, which will hopefully hold you over during the excruciatingly long 2 and a half year wait.
- It will feature a variety of different “lifestyle” mini-games that will allow you to gather a wide variety of different materials to build up your town/farm/house.
- The goal is to allow these materials to transfer over to Eiyuden Chronicle allowing you a head-start at crafting some of the different items/armor/etc in the game.
- You will get to meet a few of the characters that appear in Eiyuden Chronicle and get to know them a bit earlier.
- There may be some kind of battle mechanic, but we are still talking it over.
“Some production points of note:”
- Allowing a partner like Natsume-Atari to work on this game helps us make something we love without worrying about too much wear and tear on the team.
- The goal is to share as many assets/designs/etc. so that it will be an efficient production.
We also hear that backers will be asked to pay only seven dollars to their pledge to receive this new game. This is a cost that Rabbit & Bear cannot avoid, as explained below.
“While this is a separate title and not really DLC, we want to give this to our backers as bonus content for all the support they’ve given us. However, there is a rub—Console platform holders will charge us 30% of the base price of the game to purchase DL codes so that we can give you the game for free. That means we’d be out a HUGE amount of money if we didn’t charge something to at least cover that cost.
Based on the content of the game, we are expecting whatever publisher we end up working with to charge around 15-20 dollars for this title. 30% of that would be between 5-7 dollars. It’s a cost we can’t do anything about, so we are asking backers to up their pledge by 7 dollars if you want this companion title.
It’s a hard decision to make but making the world of Eiyuden Chronicle bigger and providing people with an early taste is our last dream. It will still be much, much cheaper than the retail price, so thank you for understanding.
If you are interested in this content, please add 7 dollars to your pledge. Due to the nature of this and the fact it is a final goal, we know it’s a bit last minute so we will try to allow backers the chance to purchase this game even after the campaign ends.”
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes’ campaign was launched on Kickstarter a month ago, reaching its basic founding goal in two hours and unlocking console platforms shortly after.
As usual, the success of this campaign shouldn’t be too surprising considering that it brings back together Suikoden creators Yoshitaka Murayama and Junko Kawano, and appears to be a spiritual successor of the popular franchise.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes will come to PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and a possible next-gen Nintendo platform in fall 2022.
For the sake of full disclosure, you should keep in mind that the author of this article is among the backers of the game.
