“Spiderweb Software’s latest crappy-looking RPG is now live,” I wrote about Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror back in 2019. Rude? No, it was entirely affectionate: Spiderweb, a husband-and-wife team of Jeff Vogel and Mariann Krizsan, makes games that look like they come from the Gold Box era but have depth and flexibility that make most modern games green with envy. They’re old fashioned, but also really good RPGs.
Which brings us to the point: Spiderweb is remaking its 2005 release Geneforge 3, as Geneforge 3: Detonation, and its Kickstarter campaign has crushed its goal in just 24 hours.
It’s not really a surprise that the Geneforge 3 remake blew past its goal so quickly. Spiderweb games don’t have a huge audience, but its fans are very reliable and committed, and have consistently demonstrated that they’re willing to pay for what they like. Spiderweb, importantly, has also demonstrated an ability to deliver. Geneforge 3: Detonation is the studio’s sixth Kickstarter campaign: All of them were successfully funded, released, and hold “very positive” ratings across a few hundred user reviews on Steam.
But that bedrock of support was established long before the days of Kickstarter. “From day one, we provided the player with a wide variety of races and sexes to choose from for player avatars,” Vogel told me in a 2016 interview. “In 1994, this was pretty radical, and it got us a lot of very long-term fans who had never seen anything like it.”
The Geneforge games—there are five in total—are set in a world ruled by wizards called “Shapers” who have the power to create life: everything from cute pets to deadly fighters and living tools of all sorts. They’ve built a mostly prosperous and stable society, but they rule with an iron fist: Shapers guard their power jealously, and any of their creations who disobey are destroyed immediately. But some of those creations are intelligent, and you can probably guess where things are going from there.
Geneforge 3: Detonation “will be mostly the same” as the original release, but with more: Spiderweb says it will “add a modern UI and expand the world, adding new characters, storylines, abilities, game mechanics, and other ways to go crazy with your mutant monsters.” New spells and systems, including a “fuser” system enabling character mutations, will give experienced Geneforge players even more toys and strategies to play with.
With the base goal achieved, Geneforge 3: Detonation is now into stretch goals. The first, a new endgame creation, has already been passed, and it seems likely that the second, a new faction at $60,000, will also be hit. The final stretch goal, at $80,000, will add a hidden storyline to the game, “full of exceptional weirdness, cool lore, and maybe even fun characters from the earlier games.”
The Geneforge 3: Detonation Kickstarter runs until August 13, while the game itself is expected to be out in early 2027. For a closer look at what to expect, and why Spiderweb fans are so committed to its games, check out Kerry Brunskill’s dive into Geneforge 2: Infestation—”not the old-fashioned CRPG it appears to be.”
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