Last year was a great year for indie games and at least part of that success is thanks to crowdfunding. 2017 saw a sharp increase in Kickstarter game funding after a dismal 2016 campaign.

Since it’s creation in 2009, Kickstarter has been a goldmine for indie developers looking to create the next big game. Then in 2016, the well appeared to run dry. Maybe it was due to an over-saturation of products, maybe people had just been burned by one too many projects, or maybe it was something else entirely. Whatever it was, 2017 managed to overcome it.  

The crowdfunding site celebrated a game funding increase of 29 percent in 2017, with last year also seeing the most game projects funded on Kickstarter in any year to date, according to Luke Crane, Head of Games at the company.

The success of games on Kickstarter is great, but there is something to consider. Tabletop games are wildly popular on the platform and likely make up a significant portion of the overall funding. Crane says in another tweet that “Tabletop games had 528K backers to successful projects.” Though those appear to be unique backers, it isn’t entirely clear how tabletop projects fit into the gaming equation, and whether or not it was their success that dragged up the entire gaming category. 

Either way, it was a good year for gaming on Kickstarter and that’s good for the gaming industry as a whole. At a time when gamers are getting more and more fed up with microtransactions and loot boxes, it’s good to see people redirecting their money towards indie projects, tabletop or otherwise.