In November of 2012, we raised over $400,000 through Kickstarter toward the development of a top-down "rogue-like game with story" based on a previous project developed by our lead programmer. However, as we started to get feedback from our backers, we realized that the majority of them wanted a game more like Quest for Glory, the award-winning game series that Lori and I developed in the 1990s.
Hero-U has evolved into a much larger and more expensive project. While it is taking much longer than we originally planned, the result will be far more than we originally imagined possible. We think it will be a great game and one you will love playing.
Hero-U is a passion project for Lori and me. We have put two and one-half years of our life into it so far, and we will continue to do whatever it takes to make this a great game. That includes hiring the best programmers, artists, and musicians we can find.
It is unusual for the same project to raise funds on Kickstarter twice, but it is not unusual for a game to need additional funding. We have talked to many adventure game developers, and nearly all of their projects went over budget. They have either absorbed the costs themselves or obtained venture capital.
We chose not to seek outside funding because we want Hero-U to be a game of, by, and for our many heroes. Kickstarter is where we began, and we would like this to be a wholly crowd-funded game.
