A Kick for Kickstarters: Armed Fantasia & Penny Blood (Updated)

Crowdfunding has been used to fund several video game spiritual successors over the years. The fans have directly pledged their money for the development of semi-new installments in franchises they’ve asked old development team members to continue. The publishers who previously funded the entirety of these projects figured there was a lack of demand for them, for which they were largely proven wrong. Campaigns like those for Pillars of Eternity (an isometric successor to the likes of the Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale franchises) and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (a successor to the IGAvania series of Metroidvania titles from Konami) were successful. Others were not, like Mighty No. 9 (a failed successor to Mega Man, which made its return a few years later).

Now, developers of classic Japanese RPGs have taken notice of crowdfunding. The Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes campaign was wildly successful, one for a Suikoden successor that involves the original developers. It was so successful that it even received an action RPG spinoff ahead to the main game’s release. Now, two more development teams consisting of JRPG veterans have since taken interest in crowdfunding for the rare Dual Kickstarter. Wild Bunch Productions and Yukikaze have teamed up to launch a campaign to fund both Armed Fantasia: To the End of the Wilderness and Penny Blood, spiritual successors to the Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts franchises, respectively. Both franchises have been largely dead since the PlayStation 2 era.

Wild Bunch Productions consists of veterans from the Wild Arms team who used to work for developer Media.Vision, helmed by creator Akifumi Kaneko — more known for the Symphogear series these days. The Wild Arms franchise has been dead for a significant 15 years now, the last release being strategy RPG Wild Arms XF on PSP in 2007. The last mainline numbered release was Wild Arms 5 on PS2 in 2006. Outside mobile game Wild Arms: Million Memories, launched and shut down after 18 months in February 2020, Sony hasn’t used the franchise. There is not a better time for a spiritual successor.

One look at Armed Fantasia could tell anyone familiar with Wild Arms that it’s a spiritual successor to that franchise, especially the last few installments given the character design style. This gets even more overt with the story description, in which Pathfinders equipped with ARMs (very on the nose) will venture across a western-influenced world to dispose of Anomalies that ravage it. The characters revealed thus far, Ingram Goodweather, Alicia Fairhead, and Elucid Sturges (all names suffused with Wild Arms Energy), will fight in quickly-paced turn-based battles. Some exploration and fighting can be seen in the concept trailer, which shows how they already have a good foundation for the game they want to make.

Michiko Naruke is returning as composer, dividing her time between, at least, this title and the aforementioned Eiyuden Chronicle. Noriyasu Agematsu is joining her, who contributed to the last three Wild Arms titles. Tomomi Sasaki, of Wild Arms 5 and XF, is providing character designs.

Yukikaze, meanwhile, is helmed by Matsuzo Machida, responsible for helming the Shadow Hearts games. He and character designer Miyako Kato have remained partners in the years since the franchise’s last installment, Shadow Hearts: From the New World, released a massive 17 years ago in July 2005. Kato revealed in 2016 that FtNW wasn’t actually the third mainline game in the series, but a spinoff. Shadow Hearts 3 was intended to be a prequel to the first two titles, but was never green lit. The SH brand was last used for pachinko games based on the first two games released in 2008 and 2015 by rights holder Universal Entertainment Corporation, formerly game developer Aruze. The development team behind the games is scattered across the Japanese gaming industry, but many of them, including composer Yoshitaka Hirota, have been reassembled for Penny Blood.

Penny Blood is, in terms of its setting, very much a successor to Shadow Hearts. The game will begin with the story of private detective Matthew Farrell, who works for the Bureau of Investigations in New York. What gives Farrell a better advantage with fighting monsters that have manifested in several parts of the world is his Fusion abilities, which unsurprisingly sound similar to those several characters possessed in the Shadow Hearts titles. Also like those games, the adventure will take Farrell and other characters to parts of Europe, Japan, China, and perhaps other locations. The game’s tone will be closer to the first Shadow Hearts game and predecessor Koudelka, with heavy focus on horror elements, rather than the toned down and more comedic worlds of Shadow Hearts: Covenant and FtNW.

Wild Bunch and Yukikaze are asking for $721,578 to fund both projects. The amount is low for two fully-3D games with budgets bound to go well into the millions, but that’s because these are pitches for a publisher to fully fund the project. They’ll need a good amount of starting money to complete the prototypes for them to pick it up. There are several pledging goals for digital and physical copies for each game, or for both together for a discount. The $1,000,000 stretch goal, meanwhile, appears to be for console ports. Funding is moving so fast that any number I add here will be invalidated in minutes, but it’s on its way to success with funding being halfway to the goal. Update: The project has now been funded, but there are stretch goals to fulfill.

There’s also a little more known about the development teams. The name “Media.Vision” is interestingly absent from the Armed Fantasia description, who worked on all the previous Wild Arms games. They haven’t released a game since Valkyria Chronicles 4 in 2018, so perhaps they could use the work if they’re not busy with a project yet to be announced. Meanwhile, Yukikaze will be working with Shade for Penny Blood, previously responsible for games like Kandagawa Jet Girls and the upcoming Samurai Maiden. We should hear more details about the development teams as the campaign progresses.

Wild Bunch and Yukikaze are being honest with the release timeframes for Armed Fantasia and Penny Blood, with both due in 2025 and 2026, respectively. The former is further along in development compared to the latter. Three-to-four years is already a big gap, but delays should be anticipated considering the history of crowdfunded titles. Hopefully the campaign will be overwhelmingly successful for them, because there are a few more older titles that could use spiritual successors. A good publisher should ideally recognize the projects. When XSeed Games launched, for instance, the first titles they localized were Wild Arms 4 and Shadow Hearts: From the New World. It would be a fun bit of nostalgia if they took over publishing for these, but we’ll see.