New Toejam and Earl arrives on Kickstarter

The promised return of retro franchise Toejam and Earl has arrived on Kickstarter.

The game, teased earlier this month, is called Toejam and Earl: Back in the Groove and is being made by one of the original game’s creators and current IP owners Greg Johnson and his studio Humanature.

Johnson wants to raise $400k, of which nearly $87 has already been pledged from 1,544 backers.

We spent three months working on a sequel that was just like the first game, but our publisher Sega asked us to make a side-scrolling platformer instead,” Johnson said in the video you can see below. They were paying for it, so we did.

In 2002 we tried again to make a sequel that was faithful to game one. We got almost finished when our publisher asked us to change it again. They thought the style was too old school. So we deviated, and once again our fans were disappointed. Our publisher also made the game an Xbox exclusive so you may not have heard about it.

Now it’s time to finally make the true sequel, the one we wanted to make back then. And guess what? This time, no publisher!

Four-player co-op will be offered, including suitably retro split-screen support or online if you prefer. 2D sprites are used on a 3D background.

A release is currently pencilled in for November.