What happens when you take a beloved dystopian classic and ask for some cash from fans to reboot the series? Simple, they say “Hell Yes!” and fork over more than four times what you asked for. After asking for a paltry $400,000 from fans of the Shadowrun series, Harebrained Schemes, developers of the reboot, ended up with a whopping $1,895,772 to bring the game back to life. Apparently even those whom are making the game underestimated just how interested the community is. On their final Kickstarter update, Harebrained Schemes owner Jordan Weisman had the privilege of telling the community that by surpassing the $1.75M mark, Shadowrun will now also include magical ninjas. They haven’t said whether or not they will be a playable class, but that’s what I’m going to tell myself until I hear otherwise.
Now that Shadowrun is out of the Kickstarter workshop, finally becoming a real boy, they’ve moved on over to Shadowrun.com to guide the community through the development process. They already have their forums up and running, up-to-date news, and some background regarding previous Shadowrun games and lore. As with other successful Kickstarter projects, it appears as though development will be somewhat transparent, allowing members of the community to contribute meaningful input to the game’s creation. Those frequenting the forums have already begun to brainstorm with the development team by sharing their “Hopes and Dreams,” or by asking whether or not there will be random events in the game. Instead of having to come up with ideas on their own, Harebrained Schemes can spend some time simply looking for good ideas within the community.
With a tentative “Delivery Date” of January 2013 the development team better get cracking, now that they have promised everyone magical ninjas I don’t know how long the community will be able to hold out. Maybe if they put together some of that high-level reward swag quick enough, fans of the series will be able to contain their level of enthusiasm by showing off their well-earned backer T-shirts and personalized Doc Wagon cards.
