InXile Entertainment's The Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter has come to a close and has been successfully funded, ensuring that the classic RPG franchise gets it's first official sequel in almost thirty years. Yes, there was a Bard's Tale title originally released in 2004 on PS2 and Xbox, that had also been developed by InXile. That, however, was not an official sequel in the franchise, and presented a more humorous, light-hearted tone with more action-focused gameplay that set it apart from it's more traditional dungeon crawling predecessors, which were explained in detail in Robert Grosso's recent retrospective of The Bard's Tale series.
The Bard's Tale IV managed to rake in just above $1.5 million. While not exactly a paltry amount, this is a considerably smaller sum compared to the $3 million that Wasteland 2 brought in after factoring PayPal donations, along with the massive $4.1 million haul ($4.4 million after Paypal factored in) of Torment: Tides of Numenera, at the time the largest Kickstarter funding in history, which is scheduled for release in December of this year after significant delays. However, like with Wasteland 2, InXile has promised to match the Kickstarter initial goal funding, as well as dedicate revenue from the sales of their other games to ensure that the game has a workable and realistic budget to deliver on their promises.
Despite the smaller haul, The Bard's Tale IV campaign did manage to pass through a few stretch goals, which will add more complex NPC and crafting systems, as well as bring a few additional designers on board to create more dungeons for the game. The Bard's Tale IV estimates a delivery date of October 2017, giving it another 2+ years of development time to be worked on. Slacker Backer donations are still open through Paypal, and the possibility remains that they might meet additional stretch goals through that.