Shadowrun kickstarter blows past $400k goal in 28 hours

Developer Harebrained Schemes’ kickstarter for Shadowrun Returns has managed to reach over $500k in a little over a day, putting them well over their initial goal.

Shadowrun (the table-top RPG version) creator Jordan Weisman and his fellow colleagues at HBS expressed surprise and gratitude in a video update on their kickstarter page Thursday, thanking fans for their interest in the Shadowrun property and suggesting that more features could be added as donations continued.

The game itself, Shadowrun Returns, will be a “graphically rich 2D turn-based single player game” set in the Shadowrun universe, which hasn’t seen a visit in game format since 2007′s average shooter.

For those of you who don’t know what the Shadowrun universe actually entails, Weisman explains it best in the original kickstarter video by asking viewers to imagine “the magical creatures and races of Lord of the Rings in the high-tech and dystopian future of Blade Runner.”

Essentially, magic returns to the world at a certain date in mankind’s near future in a very disruptive manner, creating a strange fusion of the arcane and technical where free agents and mercenaries called Shadowrunners eke out a living working for whoever’s got the money.

While the mesh of high fantasy with sci-fi may not sound very functional, it’s been a fairly good mix ever since the universe’s inception as a table-top RPG almost 25 years ago. Consistent and minor modifications to the setting have kept it fairly in touch with today’s technology and internet culture.

The original kickstarter video sits below for those looking to learn more about the game’s concept. It’ll be coming to PC, as well as iOS and Android tablets. I for one am excitedly looking forward to my dwarf with a cybernetic mohawk.