Video game Kickstarters raise $46m in 2015

It’s a good time to be crowdfunding your next video game project.

Video game campaigns on Kickstarter raised $46,177,705 last year, the crowdfunding platform has revealed.

This money was spread over 421 successfully-backed projects – those that failed to reach their target in time saw their money returned to supporters. In total, 480,382 people pledged their cash towards video games.

Unsurprisingly, two titles dominated the rankings: Shenmue III and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, the spiritual successor to Castlevania pitched by original series designer and producer Koji Igarashi. Together, the two games accounted for a quarter of the money pledged last year.

Shenmue III remains the biggest Kickstarted video game to date, with over $6.3 million put forward by 69,000 backers.

Bloodstained was hot on its heels as the second-biggest games project to date, raising $5.6 million from 65,000 supporters.

Kickstarter didn’t provide a year-on-year comparison with how the video games category fared when contrstaed with 2014.

However, the combined Games category, which also includes tabletop titles, generated more than $144.4 million from nearly one million people (978,000) in 2015 – nearly twice the money and backers seen in the previous year.