In April 2012, an indie game company called Harebrained Schemes launched a Kickstarter for a online game called Shadowrun Returns. The project promised to bring back the Shadowrun franchise to gaming, complete with an old-school isometric view and tactical, turn-based combat. The campaign quickly blew past its $400,000 goal, and ended up raising over $1.8 million.

The Kickstarter is among the many over the last year to lift millions for a distinct segment online game. It’s now one of the most first of these Kickstarted games to be released.

Shadowrun Returns is accessible today on PC via Steam, and has received generally good reviews. The game’s launch trailer gives an awesome overview of both its dystopian setting and its gameplay:

More than simply a reboot of a classic cyberpunk RPG, the sport is an explanation-of-concept for the Kickstarter funding model. In a blog post this week, Shadowrun designer Jordan Weisman and Harebrained Schemes this week thanked all in their Kickstarter supporters, in addition to people that closely followed the construction of Shadowrun Returns. From Weisman’s blog post:

I desire to take a moment to personally thanks again for your whole support over the past year or so. It’s been so great hearing from you at the forums, meeting you in person at cons, and eating the bagels and pizza you sent us. It’s definitely an experience I’ll always remember!

In addition to the buzz over the sport launch, Harebrained extensively utilized the blog post to tease a brand new Kickstarter project. The hot project is for a game titled Golem Arcana, and could begin sometime in August. While the core Shadowrun Returns developers will continue to work on that game, a segment of Harebrained can be splitting off to work on Golem Arcana, which Weisman envisions as a half-tablet, half-tabletop game complete with miniatures and a unique stylus.