Larian Studios, the company name you've definitely heard of after Baldur's Gate 3's seismic impact, quietly backed one of the best Metroidvania games ever made.
Anyone who has played Blasphemous will confess that its twisting world, ungodly themes, and tense side-scrolling action are something special to behold. We can thank thousands of Kickstarter backers for funding developer The Game Kitchen through the game's production back in 2017, including, surprisingly, Larian Studios.
"Not many people know this, but Larian Studios was one of the biggest contributors during the Blasphemous Kickstarter campaign," lead level designer Enrique Colinet revealed in a recent social media post. The RPG studio supposedly "dropped a [four] figure sum, never asked for their rewards, and just kept making one of the best games ever done in recent years."
I'm not sure how a studio that staffs hundreds of developers would logistically share Kickstarter backer rewards, but the sentiment is nice either way. (Maybe all 400 of them could huddle around a projector to look at the Blasphemous art book?)
That game turned into Baldur's Gate 3, which recently made history as the first-ever game to win every single Game of the Year award at all five major ceremonies. For reference, that means the game took home gold at the Golden Joysticks, the BAFTA Game Awards, the DICE Awards, the Game Developer's Choice Awards, and The Game Awards.
The Game Kitchen itself isn't doing too bad either as the indie outfit released the devilish sequel Blasphemous 2 to critical acclaim just last year. Our Blasphemous 2 review called it unpredictable and unsettling, and that's not even to mention that it had the best interconnected map since Dark Souls.
