Hello Forgotten Ones,

We’ve been having a good run at the final stretch goal and saw some real spikes and increased activity far beyond what we’d normally expect from our PayPal pledges at this stage. Thanks to all of you for your effort in rallying to the cause! However, it’s looking really unlikely we’ll make the $4.5M stretch goal, with our current PayPal total being $239,438, which means our total money raised so far is $4,428,365, with only two days left to reach the stretch goal.

But! Our percentage of dropped pledges was way below our estimates, proving yet again that you guys rock! As you may recall, our Lead Tormenter Brian Fargo and superfan Steven Dengler matched pledges between $1M and $3M, adding a total of $200K. That money was set aside primarily against failed pledges, but because of your dedication, we can apply enough of it toward our budget – combined with the PayPal totals – so as to have reached $4.5 million.

Which means? We made it! Because you guys are so awesome (and because Fargo and Dengler are so awesome) we can implement every single one of our stretch goals, including not just the player “stronghold” but also our ideas for expanded reactivity, length and depth, pursuing some of our crazier ideas concerning choice and consequence. As we outlined in update 19, while the classic “stronghold” concept might not fit this game the potential is there to do some really interesting things to tie it into our theme of legacy and the unique weirdness of the Ninth World. Colin’s been hard at work hashing out the overall plot as well as resurrecting and moving forward with ideas we had for features such as the stronghold, and he’s come up with some pretty great ones.

Thanks to all of you, we can now make those ideas happen. Thank you!

Thomas Beekers
Line Producer

TL;DR: $4.5M Stretch Goal reached; design update; job opening for an experienced programmer; Numenera preorder ends May 31st; new concept by Andree Wallin.