Ranking Kickstarter Games I Backed but Never Finished Or Ended Up Playing At All

This one should be more fun than yesterday's Blaugust post

You know those moments where you're going about your day, brushing a cat and they're like, leaning into it and purring and then suddenly you're hit with an intrusive thought about the existence of Might No. 9? And how you once foolishly gave money to it?

This morning after giving the diabetic cats their daily insulin I sat down to think about like, the wild west gamedev days of Kickstarter. I don't think I really even need to go into that much history but it's bonkers how much that platform was a lifeline for indie developers and artists of all kinds (hell, our band raised over 10k to fund After the Lights Failed in 2013), completely full of projects that either sounded too good to be true (because they were) or were smaller and more reasonable in scope and actually came to fruition.

I decided to look through my list of backed projects and was surprised to see a mix of a bunch of different games in the following categories:

1. Released and I enjoyed immensely
2. Released and I did not enjoy
3. Released and I played but did not finish
4. Released and I still haven't installed / played
5. Never released / Cancelled / etc

For the sake of fun, we're gonna look exclusively at a selection of categories 2-5.

A fair amount of the games from category 1 I've already highlighted on the blog previously so I wanna focus attention to the stuff that either has yet to materialize, materialized and I bounced off, or....I just never even installed / forgot about lmfao

Given the ad-hoc nature of this post I'm not really sure what my "ranking" scale will be other than pure vibes. Something that's garbage might rank "higher" than something I legitimately like or are interested in and we're just gonna see what happens.

Shall we?

Category - 3: Released and I played but did not finish
Backed - 11/2021
Released - 08/09/2022

Ok so maybe it feels unfair to attribute a "did not finish" on this one because of the nature of the anthology; it's a series of different small games all based around Tarot as the core conceit and is actually really fucking cool!!

A lot of fantastic people worked on this (which is how I heard about it to back it in the first place) and I even spent a fair amount of time with it so I'm actually glad I did this blog post because it's a reminder to go back and reinstall.

Category - 2: Released and I did not enjoy
Backed - 8/2018
Released - 8/11/2021

The only reason I backed this at the time was that I was enjoying Kitfox Game's social media antics on Twitter and I was really into dungeon crawlers. I have like, zeeeerrrooo interest in dating sims and so it was kind of inevitable that I'd not like this game to begin with but I was hoping that they'd somehow turn it around and the dungeon crawling would be good. It wasn't, and the narrative was too creepy and yea, lots of regret.

Category - 4: Released and I still haven't installed / played
Backed - 02/2019
Released - 03/30/2023

Fuck, I really love the idea of reviving the Another World / Out of This World games, which is why I backed this almost instantly (plus the dev had worked on Flinthook which I absolutely loved) but when it came out I had a buuuuunch of other things going on and it slipped through the cracks. Soundtrack slaps! I'm adding it to my to-play list.

Category - 4: Released and I still haven't installed / played
Backed - 1/2018
Released - 2/22/2019

Does this one even count? I was heavy into messing around with projects in Unity and Pico 8 around the time this showed up and I thought sure, fuck it I'll make a small project for the NES.

Clearly, I did not!! But being a backer on this Kickstarter has meant that my email address has been stalked endlessly by this team's other projects and no amount of unsubscribe or "not interested" has given me freedom from them. Alas!

Category - 4: Released and I still haven't installed / played
Backed - 4/2018
Released - 11/22/2023

I'll be honest with you - I legitimately did not remember this being released.

Going through this list there are two "Hey, remember EarthBound?" games that I backed while waiting to see if that fan-made Mother 4 project was ever gonna get legs (I don't think it did, please correct me if wrong), and I could have sworn neither of these actually released...but apparently I was wrong?? This is in my goddamn steam library!! Which means not only did it release but I was sent a code and I activated it! I need to give it a shot!

Category - 5: Never released / Cancelled / etc
Backed - 7/2016
Released - TBD

Ok so this is our second "Hey, remember EarthBound?" game from the list. It's been in development hell pretty much since the Kickstarter was funded. It looked really cool and I liked the demo that was made available but yea. How they thought they could do this on $7,500 in 2016 was wild, but that they got $68,000 and still couldn't deliver is a testament to both how game dev is hard and running a business is worse.

According to the most recent updates from last month, the game is getting a new playtest on Steam (might already be active) and has lost its publisher (no, really??) so who knows. If it comes out, I'll do my best to give it a shot.

Category - 5: Never released / Cancelled / etc
Backed - 7/2014
Released - TBD

God this one was sad.

The game looked incredibly cool and Firebelly as a dev was someone I thoroughly enjoyed - but it just did not end up materializing.

It hit the $20k goal (barely) but from the updates, it appears lots of real world problems prevented development and by 2019 they were offering refunds to backers which is unique among the dead projects in this list so good on them.

Category - 3: Released and I played but did not finish
Backed - 3/2017
Released - 03/30/2021

God, the trailer for this game blew 2017 me away. I felt like we were going to be getting another Hyper Light Drifter - like obviously the "hey, the 80's were cool, weren't they??" came on a little too strong but I didn't mind.

When the demo came out I sank a bit of time into it and realized, oh fuck - I don't actually like the game feel. Also there was so, SO much lore / expository dialog IN THE DEMO which felt like a huge misstep. It made it hard to be excited when the game finally launched. I did give it an honest go, but it got sidetracked by life and it's been tough to justify going back.

Also I'm not sure what happened but I remember backing at the art book level because I was collecting art books and there was like, a printing or shipping issue so they refunded me. Trying to find out via email search what hat happened has not helped lol

Category - 4: Released and I still haven't installed / played
Backed - 9/2016
Released - 4/26/2017

What got me in the door on this was the band Slime Girls; we'd played quite a few chiptune and VGM events and festivals together leading up to this game's kickstarter and the game used some of their music. It turned out later that the primary band member Pedro Silva was a biiiit of an abusive creep to their partner and stopped making music under that name. (Didn't stop them from being on the Omori, Ooblets or Button City soundtracks tho, gross shit)

Anyway by the time the game came out I wasn't really feeling the vibe and didn't even try it. Oops. No shade to the game because like, Slime Girls wasn't really involved at all in it, just song licensed and maybe I need to revisit.

Category - 5: Never released / Cancelled / etc
Backed - 2/2015
Released - TBD

Dude this one is a shitshow. The year was 2015 and this team showed up with this impressive "Hey what if we mixed a shmup and Lucasarts adventure game? Oh and we have Danimal Canon, VIRT, Sabrepulse and so many other names connected to this" flashy Kickstarter that had so much effort put into it, and godddd damn if it wasn't all just smoke and mirrors.

They like, botched the nearly $200,000 they raised with delay after delay, excuse after excuse, legal battle with one of the composers - unlike some of the other "dead" titles on this list, Starr Mazer's Kickstarter hasn't updated since 2023.

It's fucken dead, Jim.

Category - 2: Released and I did not enjoy
Backed - 9/2013
Released - 7/21/2016

This game was crystalizing in a lot of ways for me in terms of hype and nostalgia. I wasn't ever even like a real hardcore Mega Man person, I preferred the X games over the originals but Might No. 9 is, charitably, the most textbook case of "we have Mega Man at home" that misses the point of what's good about Mega Man games.

There was a lot of skepticism before release (and after numerous delays and worrying missteps) that Inafune would actually be able to do something worthwhile and that skepticism was fucking warranted.

The writing is atrocious, the voice acting is trying its best with a garbage script, and the game is just not fun to play at all. I'd love to sit down and talk with someone who loves this game and have them sell me on it - not even to change my mind, just for me to see what they experience.

Category - 2: Released and I did not enjoy
Backed - 04/2021
Released - 12/09/2025

I know so many people who love, love this game and I was primed to be one of them, hence the backing.

Didn't pan out!! Found the story kinda off, the decision to drop the players in an incredibly boring jail sequence early in the narrative questionable, and the rhythm sections themselves were not really fun to me. As a musician this was something I was INCREDIBLY hyped for and man did it just not do it for me. I get why people like it! But boy was it not for me.

Also, as ridiculously nitpicky thing I was kinda offput in the opening moments of the game; the player character is talking with their offscreen bassist and drummer who are waiting for them to get to the stage, only to moments later cut to the band performing....and it's a three piece that doesn't have a bassist. Like, c'mon lmao

Category - 5: Never released / Cancelled / etc
Backed - 8/2013
Released - TBD

If Might No. 9 is the final boss of category 2, this is the final boss of category 5.

You can't convince me this one's real. This is one of the oldest on the list and like, you have to forgive me for being young and naïve for thinking this might be the next big thing. An X-Com style JRPG made by people who'd worked on Valkyria Chronicles, numerous Final Fantasy entries, L.A. Noir, hell the audio team was led by someone who worked on the Lord of the Rings films - this felt huge when it went live (asking for $100,000 lmfao) and making over $1million USD by the end.

And then like other projects in category 5 on this list - it never happened. Delays, delays, constant updates that like, a song was done or "Oh by the way here's a side game our team made with private investor money none of yours went to this we promise"

It's all pretty wild but LAST MONTH they updated with a new song from Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu and plans for a live event that either happened August 8th (that no one seems to be able to find a recording of) OR has been postponed to the 26th (unclear because of how the update is named but lists a different time). Wild shit.

If this actually comes out I can't imagine it'll be good but who knows.

Anyway thanks for reading. Here's your end-of-post cat. Oddly, not the one I was brushing when this all hit me but what can you do? This is Hermy; she's one of three of our longhairs and she's usually quite camera shy.

Do YOU have a kickstarter-backed backlog of stuff you've not really engaged with? Lemme hear about it!