Kickstarter games of commercial quality?

Have any been released yet?

I'm not following kickstarter news very closely, but I'm curious. Kickstarter was initially hailed at as a way to revive gaming industry by injecting more creativity into it, so does it live up to this promise or not?

P.S. By commercial quality I mean very good games. Not just average or above average, but comparable to best or very good commercial titles.

Well Divinity Original Sin just used Kickstarter to expand and polish the product but I have been massively impressed with it thus far.

Still have to wait awhile for some other projects to finish before I make a firm judgement call about the platform.

I can think of several:
Resonance, Shadowrun, Giana Sisters, Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure, The Banner Saga, FTL (personally not a big fan of this one, but I know a lot of people who love it), Expeditions: Conquistador & Divinity: Original Sin are the ones that pop to mind. There are probably several more.

Of course Kickstarter has also resulted in plenty of stinkers, but overall, thus far I think the good outweighs the bad.

I can talk only about games I backed.

Legends of Dawn - if only they didn't put endless respawns in, it wouldn't feel so average.

Consortium - completely inovative approach to VN genre, polished but too short, very good game.

Expeditions - overpowered soundtrack and a very good game in HoMM/KB style.

Original Sin - very good? It's a nearmasterpiece. A definite candidate for RPG of this year.

For phonegames, grinders, nostory and DLC-o-rama games, someone else should provide an input, I've instarefused to back those even when the KS project looked awsome.

There has been lot mediocre games games and fails but there hs been some really great games.
I was thinking to make "Kickstarter gems" list in Released kickstarter games thread here is what games would have made it to the list.

Banner saga-Maybe not top of this list but with good writing and challenging combat and deserves it's spot.And regardless of my opinion game was praised by critics and users.
Divinity: Original sinIt's new games so you can see praises everywhere if you just look at news section.My opinion(after around 10 hours of playing) is that it is classic if something doesn't go horribly wrong in the games it will end up in my top 10 RPGs.
FTL-One of most successful kickstarter games so far.There is no need to say lot about it since it's pretty famous.
Expeditions: Conquistador-Good sRPG liked a lot here on watch.It was actualy my GOTY for the last year.
Paper sorcerer-Considering it was done by one man on minimal budget game turned out great.Best indie dungeon crawler imo.
Shadowrun returns: Dragonfall-I put expansion because OC wasn't recieved that well.Dragonfall on the other hand made lot of noise with critics and players scoring lot of 9 and 10.
Valdis story-I found it fun but not really my thing.People who are into this kind of stuff sing praises.
Chivalry medieval warfare-Medieval team based multiplayer game.People say it has best melee combat in any game.Personaly I couldn't care less about it.
Xenonauts - Game heavily inspired by original X-com but not it's clone it stands on his own.I consider this true X-com sequel not that Firaxis crap.
Giana sisters-Great platformer, critics did praise it and people who played it but game wasn't very sucessful(it did make profit just not very much).
Broken age I found game charming and I expected lot more evryone else seems to disagree this is one of most praised games on the list.
Kentucky route zero-This is oldes game on the list.It's sureal, episodic P&C adventure.Game is praised everywhere.
Shovel knight-I didn't play it or intend to but nonetheless this is one of most hyped Kickstarter games.It's retro platformer and people say it's classic and can stands with Megaman and other NES classics.

Thanks, that's very interesting. So there are indeed a few worthy games. I'm even tempted to look into those I paid no attention to.

But I ask not to add Original Sin to the list of successful games. Those guys have already made three good commercial games, there was no doubt that they were going to deliver, so they can't represent a "new developer" whose creativity proved the usefulness of kickstarter.

Those few games I followed came up being too short as their main flaw.

I can definitely second Shovel Knight being good. I haven't had this much fun in a long time.

Paper Sorcerer is another one I've been working through. The graphics give me a headache though, so while I like the game play, I only spend short bursts playing it.

Originally Posted by Elel
Thanks, that's very interesting. So there are indeed a few worthy games. I'm even tempted to look into those I paid no attention to.

But I ask not to add Original Sin to the list of successful games. Those guys have already made three good commercial games, there was no doubt that they were going to deliver, so they can't represent a "new developer" whose creativity proved the usefulness of kickstarter.

Those few games I followed came up being too short as their main flaw.

I wouldn't exclude Original Sin from the list. Yes it was a company with previous commercial games, but the game they wanted to make… a turn based/party based RPG was always rejected when they presented the idea to the publishers, so they used kickstarter to see if it was really true that there was no market for that type of games, and the response was that yes, there is. Without kickstarter, Original Sin would not have happened.

Ehm, you're asking two very different things here.

First, you're asking for commercial quality - and then you go on to explain that commercial quality means good or very good. Then, you're asking for kickstarter games that match GOOD or THE BEST commercial games.

Exactly what are you asking here?

Yeah I realize that the way I worded it is awkward. I called the games commercial in order to separate them from kickstarted or free ones, i.e. non-commercial. And then I had to add that I meant only good ones from that category. I should've called them commercial hits or something alike.

Not sure everyone would consider Heroes of Steel a commercial quality game, but I do. It resembles one of the Spiderweb games, and has the same tactical feel. I've been enjoying the heck out of it the past 3 days.