3D Platformers on Kickstarter - what makes a success?

[Kresnik]

To me, it seems like the bubble has been bursting this year. Back in 2013 when we saw A Hat in Time (which does look legitimately good at this point) and Lobodestroyo, merely mentioning the N64 and making sure you released on WiiU seemed to be enough to get you funding. This year, two very decent looking games went un-funded despite ticking all the right boxes that previous 3D platformer Kickstarters have done.

It may well be that Yooka-Laylee sucked a lot of the funding out of projects like these. Or maybe it's just been a year of too many high-profile Kickstarters (Bloodstained & Shenmue 3 as well).

One final thing I'd note is - all of these devs appear to think they're going to have their biggest console successes on WiiU. Maybe that's correct, but it didn't save Poi & FreezeMe. I wonder if there's any research out there that shows where 3D platform fans moved to after N64. Personally, I grew up on 3D platformers on PlayStation - so playing up the Rare connection has no emotional attachment for me, but it's a genre I'm still very interested in. No developers seem interested in appealing to gamers like me though, which is a massive shame.

And I'm not saying being on PS4 is going to be an automatic success. GRIP (Rollcage spiritual successor) recently failed a campaign on PC/PS4, presumably thinking that those PS1 gamers moved on to PS4.