Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter ends with more than $850,000

Underworld Ascendant

The Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter came to a close this morning with $859,056 in the bank, well past its initial goal of $600,000. The amount is enough to hit a half-dozen stretch goals, including a Tracy Hickman novel, enhanced audio, the Lizardmen, the Underswamp, and the Resonant Caves. But there may be more to come, as developer OtherSide Entertainment is continuing the crowdfunding effort through its own website.

The Underworld Ascendant site offers pledge tiers similar to those on Kickstarter, for those who missed out on the original campaign or prefer to use PayPal for online purchases. Existing backers who want to upgrade their pledges will also be able to do so, but the studio asked that everyone hold off until a backer survey is sent out and completed, which is expected to happen within the next month or so.

"The first thing we want to do is outline for you, our backers, just what our outlook is for development through the rest of this year. On Monday we will be posting this outline to all members of our forums," OtherSide wrote in the most recent Kickstarter update. "We think this will give all our backers the confidence that we mean it when we say we WILL deliver this game in a timely manner, we WON'T get bogged down in feature creep and this WILL be the best CRPG since the first Underworlds."

The first post-Kickstarter community vote, on the final look of the Lizardmen, will also take place fairly soon.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.