Battalion 1944 Kickstarter funded in just three days

Battalion 1944

Battalion 1944 sounds like a very ambitious project. It's a Second World War multiplayer FPS, built in Unreal Engine 4, with motion-captured animation, assets precisely based on photos of real items and locations, and a general promise of high-budget sheen—all for a very low (relatively speaking) Kickstarter goal of £100,000/$145,000. A goal which has now been met, just three days after the campaign began.

I'll be honest, I didn't expect it to happen so quickly. Not because there's anything fishy about the Kickstarter pitch, which is actually very thorough, but because I didn't realize there was so much interest in a new WW2 shooter. I suppose it's been a long time since we've had a good realistic one, but even so, pulling in £100,000 this quickly is an impressive accomplishment.

With the base target done, the campaign is now digging into stretch goals. The developers said they have “something awesome in the works which a lot of you have been asking for,” but won't reveal what it is until it's fully planned out. Whatever it turns out to be, they said that it will “push the authentic WW2 experience to even greater heights.” Battalion 1944 has also made great leaps on Steam Greenlight, moving “overnight” from number 20 to number six on the list.

As I write this, the Battalion 1944 Kickstarter is sitting at just shy of £130,000/$188,000, with 26 days remaining in the campaign.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.