Torment: Tides of Numenera kickstarter started yesterday, funded in 6 hours, now $2m

[A Black Falcon]

$2 million, that is. Yeah, it's off to an astounding start. It's the fastest to $1 million ever for a Kickstarter, and it's the fastest first few days for any game on Kickstarter, too. Very impressive stuff. I wasn't too surprised that it started well, but the sheer speed of funding has been amazing. Most of the tiers with limits have already sold out; I missed out on the $95 collectors' edition tier, because those thousand had sold out already by the afternoon, but I did reserve one at the higher $110 tier... though those have sold out now too. It's a pretty nice collectors' edition offer, though, with a physical artbook, soundtrack CD, and more included. They also have a basic box (no limit on sales) at $65.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxi...f-numenera

As for the game, it is, as the name suggests, a spiritual sequel to Planescape: Torment, that inXile is just starting work on. So yeah, it won't have Chris Avellone, but it will have other good people, including the guy who originally created the Planescape setting, several of the top designers on PS:T, and more. The setting is unique -- it's a far-future Earth (I think it's Earth anyway, at least theoretically) where there have been many previous civilizations which have all fallen, transcended, or what have you. The resulting world is medieval, but it's a science fantasy world, which is different. I probably like high fantasy more overall myself, but some variety is nice, and the setting certainly is different.

The story sounds like it'll have some ideas similar to the original, in that it focuses on one person's (your characters') life and worth, but it'll be a new story with new themes. You will be able to choose your gender this time though, though otherwise the character is preset, as in the original game. (Of course The Nameless One's story is complete, so this story is new, but that much should be obvious for anyone who played the original.) Oh yeah, and the concept art is absolutely outstanding... go to the Kickstarter page and look at it! Project Eternity's concept art (from the original kickstarter stuff) is juvenile scribbles in comparison, pretty much...

The astoundingly fast start is pretty awesome, though. Of course PS:T is well known as one of the best games ever, and it's my and many other peoples' choice for best RPG ever, but still, this was not guaranteed, considering that inXile hasn't published any traditional RPGs yet, some people questioned why they needed a new kickstarter before Wasteland 2 even released (the reason: because designers finish their work on a game first, and the designers are done with Wasteland 2, so either they have to start on a new project, or be fired), and such, but the start proved the doubters wrong, that's for sure. Now all they have to do is make a game that lives up to the hype, and funding level. I hope it happens. (Current projected completion date, December 2014... if it doesn't slip.)

Oh yeah, the very well thought through reward tiers probably helped push up the numbers at first, too. Now they're running into the problem that lots of tiers have sales limits and those limits are all running out, which might hurt the total as more people have to settle for smaller numbers (unless they add more higher-value options too, which they haven't done so far), but even so, it was well thought through and reasonable. No $100+ for the first boxed copy here, unlike stuff like Dreamfall Chapters or Double Fine Adventure, it's a much more reasonable $65. Sure, that's more than Wasteland 2's $50, but it's a decent number, and it's the same as Project Eternity's first boxed tier.