It didn’t take long for the long-awaited successor to Suikoden to get funded on Kickstarter. Today, just a few hours after the crowdfunding campaign launched, Eiyuden Chronicle managed to surpass its funding goal of $500,000. The game is being helmed by a new studio called Rabbit & Bear, founded by some of the key creative minds behind the classic PlayStation-era roleplaying series, including Yoshitaka Murayama, director and writer on the first two Suikoden games.
The studio describes Eiyuden Chronicle as a game that aims to celebrate classic JRPGS, with features like sprite-based characters, turn-based combat, and a large, fantastical world to explore. There are also cats — lots and lots of cats. Aside from Murayama, the creative team also includes Junko Kawano, the lead artist on Suikoden 1 and 4; Junichi Murakami, art director on Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow; Suikoden Tactics director Osamu Komuta; and composers Motoi Sakuraba and Michiko Naruke.
“Over the past years the core creators have met up at different events, and of course you talk about the glory days as well as regrets,” Murayama told The Verge last week. “One common thing that always came up was ‘Isn’t it about time we make a game for ourselves? Something we really want to make? Something we can make for the fans?’ And that dream provided the spark for this current project.”
Currently, the game is slated to launch on PC in 2022, though if funding hits $1 million, it could also come to platforms like the Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5, and “Nintendo’s next generation console.”
“For this campaign, the launch timing will most likely put us right in the middle of a console transition period, meaning that some people will own next-gen consoles, and some will not. This is less than ideal when trying to run a Kickstarter campaign that you want to cater to the maximum number of people. We need to determine a single quality baseline for the game,” the Kickstarter page reads. Because of this, the studio notes that a version for the Switch would require substantial changes and downgrades, and it hopes that there “will be something akin to a Switch 2” to make the porting process more seamless.
