When Yacht Club Games created their Kickstarter campaign for Shovel Knight last Spring, they didn’t just set out to create a retro-styled platformer. They also wanted to make the development process more transparent by regularly releasing budget figures and sales numbers.
To that end, the team revealed that their initial budget for Shovel Knight was $1.44 million. So what’s a developer to do when their Kickstarter campaign only brings in $328,000? In Yacht Club’s case, they deferred the salary of their outside composer, split off the Stretch Goals into post-release content, and forgoed paychecks for the last five months of development.
“It was a difficult period, where some of us were awkwardly standing in front of cashiers having our credit cards declined, drawing from any possible savings, and borrowing money from our friends and family,” a Yacht Club team member said.
But it appears to have paid off as the team sold more than 180,000 copies of Shovel Knight during the game’s first month of availability. Amazingly, it’s selling at exactly the same pace on each platform as the 3DS, PC, and Wii U versions all account for about a third of the sales.
With a success on their hands, Yacht Club is ready to embark on creating those promised Stretch Goals. If you’d like to read more about Shovel Knight’s wild ride from Kickstarter darling to beloved game, head over to Yacht Club’s website.
