While the Golden Age of video games making bank on Kickstarter is long gone, that isn’t to say there aren’t still success stories on the platform. And a big one this month is Elin, a roguelike RPG out of Japan that’s trying to deliver on dreams that fans have been harbouring for 15 years and counting.
Elin is the prequel to a 2006 game called Elona, which as Elin’s page describes:
Elona was a roguelike game created by Japanese indie developer noa and released in 2006. Its chaotic gameplay and world, which inspired the player’s imagination, have made the game popular, and it has been translated by volunteers in many countries. Several “variants” derived from the original Elona have been also created after the source code was released. Elona and its variants retain strong popularity and community over the world even now more than 15 years after its initial release.
Original creator noa has now returned (with some help) to deliver Elin, which is basically the culmination of years and years of them playing more recent open world games, from Minecraft to Valheim, and wondering how cool it would be to have that kind of freedom in their own universe.
So Elin will be a roguelike RPG in the same vein as Elona, only now it’s going to have a lot more stuff around the edges, from detailed base-building to life sim dalliances. And boy, is that what fans of the first game want, because this game is currently exceeding all expectations Kickstarter.
At time of posting it’s picked up over USD$270,000, which doesn’t sound like a lot considering the million-dollar projects the platform is famous for, but given Elin’s scale—it was originally asking for just $38,000, just so noa could get it done—that’s loads.
What’s interesting too is that, while the original game was a big hit in Japan, the exposure this prequel is picking up is helping get the word out internationally; on a personal note I hadn’t heard Elona’s name mentioned in years, but the base-building stuff here looks like something I would be very into.
You can check out more on the campaign, including art, music, stretch goals and screenshots, here.