3. Splatoon Paints the World by Storm
It’s kind of rare to see a new IP take off as quickly as Splatoon did. But it’s also refreshing to see new games do this well.
Splatoon, for the uninitiated, is a team shooter that features you playing as an Inkling that can switch between kid and squid forms. But unlike other team shooters like Team Fortress 2, the goal is to cover the most amount of playing field possible.
The game looked pretty good at E3 2014 when it was announced, but it really took off this year. Nintendo let people try out the multiplayer before release and it got people hooked. The game has been one of the biggest successes for the Wii U, including over a million copies being sold in Japan alone.
Of course, if the game were just a success, that alone would be noteworthy, but that wasn’t the end. As Nintendo has been doing with several games, they have added lots of free content for the game, including new maps and weapons. Furthermore, they’ve been holding tournaments at a number of events for the game.
If they opt not to do the World Championships next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if they held a Splatoon Team Tournament at E3 2016.
2. Spiritual Successors on Kickstarter
It’s not a new thing to see a spiritual successor on Kickstarter — or even a game inspired by a classic game. But this year saw two spiritual successors behind one big name and one legendary team.
The first was Yooka-Laylee, being developed by Playtonic Games. You may not recognize that company but you should recognize the company name they worked for: Rare. That’s right, the guys behind Donkey Kong Country, Perfect Dark, Killer Instinct, and Conker’s Bad Fur Day were bringing a spiritual successor to their Nintendo 64 classic Banjo-Kazooie. The campaign was a smashing success, securing funding of over a million US dollars within a day and topping 2 million during the entire campaign, making it the highest funded UK-based game on Kickstarter.
And then, IGA came in.
Literally days after the Yooka-Laylee game launched, Koji Igarashi and the team at Inti Creates launched a Kickstarter campaign for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. As if the name couldn’t give it away, this is a spiritual successor to Castlevania, specifically the Metroid-vania era. The game was already being partially funded by a third party — later revealed to be Saints Row and Dead Rising publisher Deep Silver — but they needed to make sure that their investment would have a following. And clearly it did, as Bloodstained raised over $5.5 million — over 10 times the initial goal — setting a record for most money raised on Kickstarter for a video game, a mark it held until Shenmue III passed it with $6.3 million.
The success of these campaigns weren’t just good news for the developers. These were statement campaigns for fans of both. Those that supported Yooka-Laylee were tired of seeing Microsoft misuse the Rare IPs, which includes the likes of Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Killer Instinct, and Banjo-Kazooie. And the crowd supporting Bloodstained had a litany of issues that drove them including being told their favorite sub-genre had no following, Konami’s misuse of the Castlevania franchise, and the actions of Konami over the past year. And more importantly, these people just wanted to see their favorite developers create more of their favorite games, whether it had the name or not.
And that’s not even accounting for the developers. They’re no longer strapped to what a cold corporation wants and can develop what they want. It’s one of the great things of being an indie developer that has the support of the general public.
We look forward to both games in the next couple of years.
