Kickstarter veteran Harebrained Schemes LLC has done it again with an incredibly successful crowdfunding campaign for the first new BattleTech strategy video game in over 20 years. With barely one day remaining in the campaign, the studio has reached its final $2.5 million stretch goal, which will allow for the development of a PVP (player versus player) multiplayer game mode.

“Wow! In just over a month, you have managed to fund ALL of the features and content in our BattleTech Kickstarter Campaign,” the developer wrote in an update to the campaign page today. “Congratulations on this tremendous achievement!”

While the campaign is not quite over yet, the developers said that they have no plans to add more stretch goals that would increase the scope of the game further.

“As we said in our first Live Stream Twitch Q&A session, after Stage 4 is unlocked, additional funding will go towards polishing the features and content we’ve already committed to,” they explained. “After that, any additional funds will go toward funding a Post-Launch Live Team that will continue developing additional features and content. First among them will be Cooperative Multiplayer, which will allow you and a friend to face-off against AI opponents.”

Resurrecting BattleTech

The BattleTech franchise originated with a series of strategic board games, and its video game adaptations have been around since the early days of the PC gaming market, going back to the 1988 game BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception. The series also includes the long line of MechWarrior games, which were set in the same universe but usually focused on real-time combat rather than turn-based strategy.

Harebrained Schemes’ describes its new Battletech title as a “Turn-based tactical ‘Mech combat set in the classic 3025 era of the BattleTech Universe.”

The game production will include support from Jordan Weisman, the creator of the BattleTech and MechWarrior, franchises, as well as from Harebrained Schemes Creative Director Mike McCain and veteran MechWarrior game producer Mitch Gitelman.

After the campaign concludes tomorrow, BattleTech will be Harebrained Schemes’ fourth successful Kickstarter campaign after Shadowrun: Returns, Shadowrun: Hong Kong, and Golem Arcana.

Image courtesy of Harebrained Schemes LLC