A Kick for Kickstarters: Tears of Magic

A big thanks to Joseph Daniels for suggesting coverage of this crowdfunding campaign.

Plenty of spiritual successors to fan favorite titles have successfully raised a good portion of their budgets on Kickstarter over the years, after the IP-holding publishers wouldn’t give the old franchises the attention they deserved. The halcyon days of crowdfunding were dominated with games like this, including Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Pillars of Eternity, and, sorry, Mighty No. 9.

But the games inspired by installments in those largely-dead franchises shouldn’t go forgotten as they’re being crowdfunded, the majority of games that make the platform. One such title is Tears of Magic, an RPG largely inspired by Capcom’s long-dead Breath of Fire Japanese RPG series — particularly those released before Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. The fear, however, is that this one might have been lost in the shadows.

That’s “largely inspired by” BoF because Swedish developer Good Old Pixel claims from the Kickstarter pitch that it also takes inspiration from Bioware’s Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises. But it’s clear from observing the synopsis and screenshots where most of the inspiration comes from. The game will feature a protagonist born as one of the last dragons in the world, one that hasn’t seen the creature in over a century. There’s a first time for everything for a world populace, and they’ll see one after the protagonist unleashes the dragon form within them as they go on an adventure that seeks to unravel secrets in the game’s world.

The main character is Kaiser, the gender, hair style and color, and skin color for whom will be of the player’s choosing in a welcome level of customization. (This, of course, includes blue hair.) They will, as implied above, have the option to transform into various dragon forms, several of which are planned to be unlocked throughout the game’s story. Other characters include Lunarfang Clan member Basir (who should interest several of the writers here), Tide Clan member Eris, Quickfeet Clan member Darius (who should interest one writer in particular), Longear Clan member Benji (female, by the way), Stronghorn Clan member Dylan, Slithering Clan member Violet, Sky Clan member Nion, felly Sky Clan member Lilith, and Whispering Clan member Yggi.

There’s nothing suggesting all those characters will be playable, but some stick out enough character design-wise that it would be a shock if they weren’t. Having the playable characters represent multiple races and clans brings to mind — you guessed it — the Breath of Fire series.

The sprite work, character design style, and camera angles during exploration and battle shown so far are similarly inspired by that classic Capcom franchise — especially Breath of Fire IV. The sprite work and character designs were never going to match its closest inspiration, which has some of the best sprite work ever seen in a video game, but it’s a reasonable-enough facsimile. The color use is too blandly green in the screenshots and video shown on the crowdfunding page, but it looks okay for a game clearly early in development. Elements can always be added, which hopefully won’t sacrifice the performance.

Good Old Pixel is asking for $90,869 to realize the project, and I’m not optimistic that it will make the funding goal at the current pledging rate. The campaign, as of this writing, is sitting at just over $59,000, and has remained around this vicinity for hours. There tends to be a rush of funding at the beginning and conclusion of crowdfunding campaigns, but getting one-third of the required funding through pledges in under 24 hours is a tall order for any project. There are also no assurances that a “rush of funding” will even occur for this project if potential pledgers happen upon the page and realize how unlikely it is to make it to the goal.

What went wrong here? The developer and project attracted a fair amount of attention on social media, and timed the launch of the campaign well enough. But it hasn’t received much attention outside that, from the press or other influencers and content creators. There’s also no underestimating the appeal of spiritual successors that actually have veterans of the old franchises working on them. Tears of Magic was never going to attract anywhere close to the amount of attention that projects like Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, Armed Fantasia, and Penny Blood did, spiritual successors to Suikoden, Wild Arms, and Shadow Hearts, respectively, with development team members from those franchises working on them. Outside of composer Yoshino Aoki, no one from the old Breath of Fire teams is working on this game. Alongside the other aforementioned factors, a project like this shows how difficult it can be to attract attention for a successor through crowdfunding in 2022.

It’s not impossible for the Tears of Magic campaign to make it from this point, but I hope Good Old Pixel has a contingency plan in case it doesn’t. The next 24 hours will be critical.