Kickstarter’s first Japan-based video game project, Project Phoenix, was uploaded yesterday and seemingly overnight has made a crowdfunding fortune, with over double its initial $100,000 goal hit. The pitch slams modern JRPGs and claims it will breathe new life into the genre through a team of AAA developers. Wowsers.
While the company itself has come out of nowhere, its staff all have a ton of experience in the industry. An all-star collaboration of Eastern and Western game developers, Creative Intelligence Arts . Among them is legendary game composer Nobuo Uematsu, who will be doing the full score for the game. And the game’s director, Hiroaki Yura, has worked on AAA RPGs like Diablo III and Valkyria Chronicles.
There’s also the game’s art supervisor, who is still shrouded in mystery but supposedly worked on “some very famous anime that everybody knows.” It’s difficult to tell just who based on the concept art, but given the art style we can probably rule out Dragon Ball Z‘s Akira Toriyama.
This star-studded team was probably the biggest reason the game has received all this moolah. The contributors could also be those fed up with the current state of Japanese RPGs, since the game’s promotion looks like it’s trying to directly appeal to that camp.
Should the funding keep up this astonishing rate and make $1,650,000, a boatload of additional content will be added. This would include new zones, additional side stories, a fully explorable overworld, and a revamped combat system. In all of this, Creative Intelligence Arts aims to “become a phoenix that will rise from the ashes to forge a new direction for the Japanese games industry through a work that awes and inspires all.”
I can’t help but feel this is way too ambitious, and seeing how genre revival stuff like Broken Age has gone, doesn’t inspire confidence. And as with most Kickstarter games, there isn’t any demonstration of early gameplay to show. The fact that Phoenix does have such immense talent behind it, though, does give more hope than most.
I’m excited to see what this game will be like, but kind of disappointed the game has no connection to Dead Phoenix, the cancelled Capcom game for Gamecube that looked seriously awesome. I guess I’ll just have to accept that my dreams of flying around the world as a fiery-winged man will never come true.
(Kickstarter via Polygon)
- If you’re looking for new life breathed into a genre, though, WayForward is doing that already
- With all of the money the development team wants, they could buy that ridiculous Saint’s Row IV pack!
- With all due respect, Creative Intelligence Arts, there are still a ton of great JRPGs out now.
