Kickstarter rival Gamefound had its biggest year yet in 2023, with $12m Nemesis sequel taking the lion’s share

Crowdfunding platform Gamefound continued to take the fight to Kickstarter last year, with the company saying it saw the total amount of money pledged to tabletop projects nearly double year-on-year.

Gamefound saw overall project revenue jump to $56 million during 2023, the company told Polygon, an almost 98% increase on the $28 million it made in 2022. That figure was itself a 45% increase compared to 2021, despite not quite hitting Gamefound’s target of $67.5 million - equivalent to around 25% of Kickstarter’s reported figure. March 2022 saw Gamefound throw open its doors to projects from all creators, having previously limited crowdfunding campaigns to select publishers during an open beta period.

One project was responsible for over a fifth of Gamefound’s 2023 total: Nemesis: Retaliation, a sequel to the Aliens-inspired co-op horror board game created by Gamefound parent Awaken Realms, which was backed to the tune of $12.1 million.

Gamefound claimed that Nemesis: Retaliation was both Gamefound’s biggest campaign to date, as well as the biggest crowdfunding campaign of 2023 on any platform. While Kickstarter has not released its own overall figures for 2023, its highest-funded tabletop project appears to be BattleTech: Mercenaries, a new box set for the ‘80s mech wargame that garnered over $7.5 million.

Nemesis was followed in the rankings by a spate of video game adaptations, with Chip Theory Games’ The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era making over $4.6m, latest The Witcher board game Path of Destiny collecting $4.4m and Awaken Realms’ own adaptation of post-apocalyptic first-person shooter STALKER raising $3.6m.

Rounding out the platform’s 10 most-funded projects were multiple new editions of older games - including Firefly: The Game and Food Chain Magnate - along with another Awaken Realms game in Dragon Eclipse, sci-fi worker-placement title Andromeda’s Edge, mafia board game Scarface 1920: Blood Business (unrelated to the gangster movie) and a series of sci-fi miniatures under the Ravaged Star banner.

Gamefound’s record revenue came from 142 successful projects, according to founder Marcin Świerkot, meaning that the average amount pledged to each game was just shy of $400,000.