A new project from creator Double Kickstarter sees JRPG icons Matsuzo Machida and Akifumi Kaneko teaming up to seek funding for two games, Armed Fantasia and PennyBlood. Armed Fantasia looks to serve as a spiritual successor to the beloved fantasy western RPG series Wild Arms while PennyBlood acts as a follow-up to developer Sacnoth’s Shadow Hearts. Kaneko served as producer and designer for the entirety of the Wild Arms franchise, while Machida served as director for the original Shadow Hearts and its sequel, Shadow Hearts: Covenant.

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While the Kickstarter campaign has not fully launched yet, Double Kickstarter’s page does give some information about the game revivals to come. Backers will apparently have the choice to back either one or both games through the campaign, with fans able to choose which game they receive for their funding. The creator description also includes links to the webpages for each game’s studio, though neither appears to be finished. Wild Bunch Productions’ website currently lacks a homepage and PennyBlood’s only features a homepage with a splash image.

A spiritual successor to either franchise would come following a long period of dormancy for the two classic RPGs. Wild Arms’ last entry came in the Japan-only mobile game Wild Arms: Million Memories, which ran for two years from 2018 to 2020. The franchise has not seen a global release since 2008 when Wild Arms XF was released for the PSP. Shadow Hearts has seen a similarly long hiatus, with the franchise’s original trilogy ending with Shadow Hearts: From the New World on the PS2, having a staggered global release from 2005 to 2007.

The Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts spiritual successors serve as the most recent in a long line of spiritual successors funded through Kickstarter. 2018 saw the release of Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon led by former Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi, with Bloodstained’s success later seeing a sequel in Ritual of the Night. Yooka-Laylee was also one of the platform’s most popular games, with ex-Rare developers working on the 3D platformer. Armed Fantasia and PennyBlood will look to see similar success to these iconic projects following the launch of Double Kickstarter’s campaign.

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Source: Kickstarter