Against all odds, the Takedown Kickstarter has achieved its funding goals.
The odds weren’t good for the Takedown Kickstarter. It was aimed at a very niche audience, as evidenced by its original, uniquely awful Crowdsourced Hardcore Tactical Shooter title, and the initial pitch effort was unspectacular, to put it kindly. By the time of the name change, which came with just five days left in the project, it hadn’t achieved even half of its $200,000 goal. But something funny happened on the way to dismal failure.
What exactly that “something” is remains a bit of a mystery but things turned around in a hurry over those last five days, as Takedown reached its goal late last night, just a few hours before the curtain fell. The final mark is actually well above goal: $221,833, not quite a Double Fine Adventure-esque runaway but still a solid win. In fine form, the team has joined the “Kicking It Forward” campaign, pledging five percent of the profits from the finished game to support other Kickstarter efforts.
Don’t be expecting to be tactically shooting hardcores anytime soon, however. The 200 large will pay for an alpha build of the game which will then be used to convince private investors of its viability as a “real” game. That’s a different approach than most Kickstarters and one that’s rubbed a few people the wrong way, but Takedown, despite its very particular target demographic, makes some big promises. If all goes as planned, the game will ultimately offer a single-player campaign featuring a variety of “real” scenarios, like hostage rescue, asset recovery and target elimination, plus co-op and competitive multiplayer action. The game will launch on PC first, with console versions to follow as well as possible Mac and Linux translations, and is currently expected to be out in one version or another in July 2013.
A final Kickstarter status update, which will hopefully include a more detailed look at plans for the game, will be posted tonight.
