List of Kickstarter RPGs Top 30 Ranked
 

I've used Kickstarter in the title becaise when I searched for "Kickstarter RPGs" on [insert search engine here] nothing came up as a comprehensive list. The only vaguely useful list was the standard Wikipedia page that listed all the crowdfunded games it knew about.

So I've titled this as Kickstarters so that RPGWatch might benefit from clicks from anyone doing similar searches. Who knows, maybe it might even get top result one day ;)

So, yes, the following includes alternative crowdfunding, such as Fig etc. I also only cherry picked games which this site has shown a great deal of interest in since 2012, if I've missed any out I can only apologise, it either wasn't in the Wiki article or the name meant nothing to me or it was a sadly neglected here jRPG, etc etc.

Instead of adding even more numbers to each entry, I've foregone actually writing the numbers, such as No.1, No.2 etc, instead they are listed in batches of ten which I'm sure make it perfectly easy to work out which number each game sits at.

They are ranked by Metacritic's User Score, then the title of the game, then how many people ranked it in brackets, then how much each crowdfunding campaign amassed in cold hard cash prior to development. Amazingly, I found exactly 30 games to list, which was nice and neat.

8.8 Divinity Original Sin 2 (1602) $2,032,434
8.7 Divinity Original Sin (2175) $944,282
8.5 Grim Dawn (639) $537,515
8.4 FTL Faster Than Light (1402) $200,542
8.3 Undertale (3924) $51,124
8.3 Pillars of Eternity (2414) $3,986,929
8.3 Hyper Light Drifter (300) $645,158
8.1 Kingdom Come Deliverance (1975) $1,106,371
8.1 Expeditions Conquistador (208) $77,247
8.0 The Banner Saga (735) $723,886

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7.8 Pillars of Eternity Deadfire (522) $4,705,524
7.8 Darkest Dungeon (513) $313,337
7.8 Lords of Xulima (122) $35,657
7.7 Shadowrun Hong Kong (219) $1,204,726
7.7 Legends of Eisenwald (73) $83,577
7.6 The Banner Saga 3 (76) $416,986
7.5 Hard West (145) $94,183)
7.4 Shadowrun Returns (970) $1,836447)
7.4 Pathfinder Kingmaker (342) $909,057
7.4 Sunless Sea (142) $100,803

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7.3 Wasteland 2 (1,193) $2,933,252
7.3 Serpent in the Staglands (34) $28,058
7.0 Torment Tides of Numenera (397) $4,188,927
7.0 BattleTech (323) $2,785,537
6.7 The Bard's Tale IV (83) $1,519,680
6.6 Shroud of the Avatar Forsaken Virtues (37) $1,919,275
6.5 Dead State (91) $332,635
6.3 Sunless Skies (47) $377,952
4.3 Jagged Alliance Flashback (75) $368,614
2.1 Underworld Ascendant (45) $860,356

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There are lots of ways you could interpret this data, and no doubt lots of ways to partially dismiss it. For example, Metacritic User Scores aren't the best way to rate games, nor the most up to date, as not many people use it any more and most people use Steam analytics for their quality guesstimation data. Also, a game with only 30 ratings is going to be far more prone to huge fluctuation than a game with over 1,000, obviously.

Also, just because a game has been Kickstarted it doesn't mean that the game was made for that amount of money. In a lot of cases it merely contributes to other funding. Shroud of the Avatar, for example, had a budget of $11m, but $9m of that came from 'private sources' and only the $2m for kickstarter. Those who are familiar with all the games will know which is which, but there's no easily presentable way to talk about each individually on a predominantly list-based thread.

The chart is already quite cluttered and I enjoy decluttering it into smaller clusters by refining the question and having the above list as the longhand for further information. For example: The following is a list of the top 10 cheapest kickstarters ranked by Metacritc User popularity:

$200k FTL
$51k Undertale
$77k Expeditions Conquistador
$313k Darkest Dungeon
$35k Lords of Xulima
$83k Legends of Eisenwald
$94k Hard West
$100k Sunless Sea
$28k Serpent in the Staglands
$332k Dead State

As you can see, the jumps get pretty big after $100k, nothing in fact until one game at $200k, and then again nothing until the $300k batch starts. I should have made it a top 7 as $2-300k stops being 'cheap' really, but it at least shows the scale of increase.

There's the middle ten at $300k-$1m but that's not interesting, that's all average information, so let's jump straight the top ten most expensive. Only, to make it interesting, this time they'll be ranked in money order and have their User Score as supplementary information, because, well, with money comes expectation:

$4.7m Deadfire 7.8
$4.1m Torment 7.0
$3.9m Pillars 8.3
$2.9m Wasteland 7.3
$2.7m BattleTech 7.0
$2.0m Divinity Two 8.8
$1.9m Shroud Avatar 6.6
$1.8m Shadowrun Returns 7.4
$1.5m Bard's Tale IV 6.7
$1.2m Shadowrun HK 7.7

Which, of course, shows that money can't buy you a good game. Just, in most cases, a nicer looking one. So when someone does combine money with a good game, they get the number 1 spot overall, but combining money with a bad game and… oh my, there's a lot of those in the bottom 10 overall.

Feel free to make your own top 10s out of the list as well. Data can be fun like that.

If I can figure out a way to analyse it, I'll run them all through Steam score data, but I'm not sure at this point how one could use their data for this kind of list as Steam's primary use is individual sales data, which is useful if you are already looking at the game and are interested, but not so useful for skimming for primary data regards games one is unaware of or comparison analysis.

Interesting list - not sure you can compared ftl to pillars - not to say ftl isn't fun - it is but it isn't really an rpg in the traditional sense. Having said that I belive that Bards Tale IV is extremely under-rated. It was review bomb because it wasn't really what people expected. ALso battletech is a bit surprising (with regards to low rating). For games like wasteland did you use the score for the director cut or regular - i guess regular - director cut was 7.6 - still surprise it wasn't rated a little higher. Of course divinity original sin enhanced edition was only 8.3 (lower than the non enhanced ;))
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Amusing - for Joxer - some clown gave divinity original sin enhance edition a 0 because no respawning mobs - preventing them from grinding.

Yes, there's a few on there I would rather not have on there from a not-really-RPG PoV, but the list was more for the RPGWatch than it was for me ;)

Also, yes, in each case I used the first released version of the game. As you noted, you get small fluctuations based on version, but there's no consistency and the number of voters is routinely smaller for any revised versions. I used a method based on consistency but I wouldn't object if someone remade the list using 'best score version' or any other personal choice criteria.

All the games are underrated for the people that gave them 10/10 and all of them are overrated for the people that gave them 0 out of ten ;)

My view would be that Serpents in the Staglands is criminally underrated from the perspective of a 28k price development for the sheer originality and joy of what was delivered as a product. Surely the cheapness should weigh into anyone's 'leeway'o'meter' when playing it. But then most people wont know or care about that. Whereas Bard's Tale IV is offered as a premium product with oodles of money put into it that also already has an established expected template to work from, therefore it would be more inglorious to fuck that up when you already have so much in your favour.

Like if, at the Olympics, some total newcomer from butfuck nowhere suddenly won the 100 meters by stumbling over the line unceremoniously versus a Usain Bolt who turned up drunk, ran sloppily and came in 7th and then shrugged and wandered off for another drink.

On the topic of Brian Fargo, it's interesting to note that all three of his kickstarters are in the bottom 10, and yet Wasteland 3 already has $3.25m+ in Fig funds. Oh, wait, that Fig started before Torment or Bard's Tale released… Oh well, you never know, this might be the one… 4th time's the charm.

Thanks for organising the data and revealing the correlations - quite interesting.

I can not see Shadowrun Dragonfall in the list - it might be a derivative work from Returns and hence why it is not included.

I don't think it used crowdfunding. From it's wiki page:

And it wasn't on the wiki list of crowdfunded games.

Being a bit of a graphics hound I was surprised how many of those I have played - not just once to completion but a couple of times.

Either way it is nice to see games of this type doing well enough to be a somewhat solid provider of games even if we differ on how we might rate them.

It is saddening to once again realize how unpopular Torment is. I thought it was one of the more orginal kickstarter titles. Intresting to see if it gains more popularity as years go by.

And I'm somewhat surprised that wasteland 2's metascore won't begin with the number 8 since Fargo and his team really took care of post release support… Perhaps people just remember how buggy it was at the launch and not the final director's cut edition which was darn great. I don't think it is one of the best rpg or anything like that, but an easy 8 without doubt!

You always get a lot of people who buy the game just because "they heard it was fun" and really don't know anything more than that when they start playing. They end up hating it (and would have hated any game in its genre) so they down vote it.

Great work, @lackblogger :)

Then we have only 30 RPGs Kickstarted? Because…. come on, Underworld Ascendant iis in Top 30? If we had 31 RPGs kickstarted, it surely would fall out of the list :P

That's quite a list there. Thanks for the effort involved in compiling it all and sharing it with us. How it still irks me to see Shroud of the Avatar in such a coveted position.(((((

Those aren't the metascores. Those are the user-scores, which, imo, aren't very useful for any kind of ranking or comparison. They're too often skewed by trolls and/or fanboys rating a game "0" or "10" in an attempt to lower or boost its score.

Fwiw, the metascore for Torment is 81. The metascore for Wasteland 2 is 81 for the original release and 87 for the Director's Cut.

Torment is one of the most memorable games I have played in the last 5 years. It really needs dedication and if you are just skipping dialogs you really are not going to get much out of the game. WL2: DC was great, i'd love to play it again but I don't think I have the free time these days. I think I have really enjoyed all of InXiles games but I haven't played BTIV yet. I'm glad i waited for the final patch from what I have heard.

My word, it's as if you're stuck in 2008.

Do you not remember any of the hilarity about 'reviewer scores' that rocked the gaming industry in the period before kickstarters? There were huge scandals on an almost weekly basis and ever more bizarre scores being 'fixed'. LMAO.

Here's a brief reminder:

Dragon Age 2 'Metascore' - 8.2
User Score - 4.5

PC Gamer's review nugget:

In fact, that's pretty much why people don't even use Metacritic anymore :D

Some headline scandals from that era:

It's truly fascinating how you managed to survive that era will zero scepticism of 'review scores'

The current scandals revolve around the payment and promotion of 'youtube influencers', cos, you know, times they are'a'movin'on. Lol.

If I'd found 31 then I'd have made it a top 31… and UA would've been all alone in it's fourth box :D

Probably more apt really :)

A few more thoughts I had on my daily walk:

The reason I went with first released game as my consistency, among many thoughts that jumbled while compiling the list, was that the first version will be the one that was funded by the crowdsourcing. If, down the road, a better version emerged then that will have been paid for by new sales from the already completed game. Ergo, the newer version is not kickstarted. Otherwise, why wasn't all the money spent on the initial release, why was there money left over to make the game again down the road.

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Re: Torment:

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Torment is an absolutely fascinating game for this kind of discussion. The conflict between what it said it was going to be and the niche within a niche it arrived as is almost impossible to separate. You'd be equally as accurate to dismiss the game entirely as a completely cynical scam as you would claiming it's an undervalued masterpiece.

Here's the initial background:

As a result of no joy from WotC in securing the D&D licence for Planescape, even though Monte Cook and Colin McComb were:

Monte Cook started a Kickstarter to make a new Pen and Paper setting, similar to Planescape but without any copywrite issues.

This Kickstarter came into fruition in 2013:

However, the Kickstarter for Torment: Tides of Numenera started before anyone even got a hold of anything Numenera:

The Kickstarter for the 'spiritual successor' started on 6th March 2013. With Colin McComb, Monte Cooke's old mate and Avellone's second fiddle on Planescape: Torment, taking the Creative Lead role after only starting work at Inexile in 2012 and after many years of not much involvement in the video game industry.

Chris Avellone was not to be involved…

Well, he was given a stretch goal companion. At a very high tier level, £3.5m, which, luckily for the game's 'rep' it just managed to squeak past by about 600k.

The Kickstarter for Torment's first banner headline was:

However, by this point it was fully clear to the developers that the game would have virtually nothing in common with Planescape:

No D&D
No Avellone
No Sigil
No returning characters

Basically… a completely different game. And yet the Planescape hype was the driving force behind the kickstarter's marketing and success.

The original line from where it all began was:

To which, no, the proposed game was not a Planescape game and no, they didn't get most of the team back - 'most' of the team being, basically, Chris Avellone.

Instead, what we are suddenly knee deep in is a forced semi-clone that is not much more than a circle-jerk self promotion of a new pen and paper RPG, completely alien to the original game in all but some vague personnel input.

What is commonly referred to as a bait and switch con.

However, in this instance, the con is confused by the fact that the people engaged in the con did not necessarily knowingly perform a con, they just eased themselves slowly into that position over a long period of time, reacting to each setback with an ever more distancing work-around. Sort of like a discussion thread that gets slowly completely derailed over time to the point where on a thread entitled "Interesting ducks of the Orient" is discussing "Traditional Argentinian headwear" by page 43.

The extent of the con was therefore on a fine line. A balancing act of public relations. And then the game was released:

and the initial reviews started coming in:

… 191 people found this review helpful.

Now…

wait a moment…

We're down the road a bit now.

People are experiencing the game away from the time.

People are now playing the game not as a sequel to Planescape, but as an individual game about Numenera…

Like someone who's just awoken from a coma and can appreciate the game… for what it is… absolutely none of the above is relevant to them. They heard there's this game that's got lots of text in it and has 'unique' aspects of interest. If you like reading in your games, reading being most of the 'game' in fact, then there's this great little visual novel cRPG combo game called Numenera…

To which the niche who like the sound of that start giving it better scores.

Because it's now targeting the right people.

People who probably would have given them about $3-500k to kickstart it (aside from them all donating to each other to grab the big money headlines, of course).

So, yeah, an utterly fascinating insight into the inherent problems of 'quality analysis' and one you can tell why it peaks my interest so much as someone who loves analysing statistics and has a consumer-interest mindset.

No actually, I don't remember that happening on an "almost weekly basis". Probably because it didn't. :)

Despite the occasional sketchiness from some critics, I still trust the metascore of most games (notice I said "most" not "all") over the user-reviews simply because that site is too often trolled by people who were pissed off that the latest Mass Effect game didn't have perfect facial animations, or that the newest Deus Ex title had a bullshit DLC scheme, or whatever other angst-driven excuse they use to bomb a game purely out of emotion.

On top of that, *anyone* can leave a user-review on that site. There's no way of knowing if they've even actually played the game. At least on Steam you're restricted to reviewing games that are actually in your library, and Steam shows the amount of time you played the game alongside your review.

You can choose to go with whatever you like though.

Yup, it sure did.

Cool. Amazing though how it was apparently erased from the minds of everyone but yourself. ;)

What do you mean 'everyone'?