The Shenmue 3 Kickstarter campaign ended awhile ago, garnering over $6.3 million in contributions from 69,320 backers. This set a new record for the video game category, but it wasn’t quite enough for series creator Yu Suzuki to fully express his vision for the game. That’s why he and his fellow developers set up a Slacker Backer program, allowing people to continue to contribute to Shenmue 3’s development, even after the Kickstarter had ended.
That campaign has continued to run, and will continue to do so for some time. So far it has gained an additional $170,000 for the game, bringing the total to over $6.5 million. The really good news is that all of the money being gathered as part of the Shenmue 3 Slack Backer campaign go toward unlocking the stretch goals that were announced during the Kickstarter. At the $6.5 million mark players have unlocked rag doll physics for the combat system in Shenmue 3, giving the game a bit more of a realistic feel.
Of course, this isn’t the end for Shenmue 3’s post-Kickstarter life. The team has stretch goals defined for every new milestone going up to $11 million, with question marks hinting at even more features after that. However, once the Kickstarter ended the funds began to slow significantly, so hitting that high a mark is probably out of the question at this point.
At $7 million the “AI Battling” stretch goal is unlocked, seemingly giving more of a robust combat system to the game. This could easily be reached by the time the game is released into the wild. There are also features unlocked at $7.5 million and $8 million that could be hit if there was another surge in funds from the gaming public, though they might be tough to reach given the size of Shenmue’s audience.
Either way, whether the stretch goals are hit or not, fans can rejoice in the fact that Shenmue 3 is coming late next year for PS4 and PC.
