Indivisible is on course to hit next-gen machines © Lab Zero Games

While the concept of crowdfunding video games is a relatively new one, we've already seen more than our fair share of runaway successes and dismal failures. We've even witnessed campaigns which have stalled completely, only to smash their target goals at the second attempt , but few have experienced the kind of turnaround achieved by Lab Zero's Indivisible. An action RPG with lush 2D visuals and deep, involving gameplay, Indivisible looked set for greatness when its Indiegogo campaign kicked off at the start of October 2015, and even launched with a fully playable prototype – a rare pledge indeed in crowdfunding – to encourage investment. However, things didn't go according to plan.

"We knew it was going to be hard, but we didn’t expect it to be that hard," admits Lab Zero CEO Peter Bartholow, frankly. "It was absolutely gruelling, and at times emotionally devastating. I guess we overestimated the impact of the free prototype, because we didn’t get nearly as much media attention as we expected for doing something like that. We spent a lot of money to make something polished and fun to drive the campaign, and it didn’t seem like the media really took notice of the campaign." Indeed, it's remarkable that the prototype didn't garner more attention; what Lab Zero essentially did was provide prospective backers with the opportunity to sample the game before they pledged their cash – an extraordinary gesture when you consider that other crowdfunding campaigns have succeeded with little more than rough concept art.

To do this, Bartholow and his team had to create a production pipeline for a completely new genre of game and produce a substantial amount of artwork, but in hindsight, he's not sure the additional work was worth it. "We were true to ourselves and made the campaign we wanted to make, so I half expect we’d do it all over again just because that’s who we are," he says. "But at the same time, we did a lot of things people say they want and went largely unnoticed. So maybe it’d be more economical not to make a prototype and spend that money on marketing the campaign instead? I realise how cynical this all must sound, but after going through all of that and seeing all these recent campaigns that have succeeded purely on the names of their creators, it’s hard not to think that we could’ve saved ourselves a lot of time, money and heartache by foregoing the prototype and putting together a more traditional campaign."

Indivisible's campaign had an initial goal of $1.5 million, but after more than a month only $764,000 had been pledged, putting the future of the project into doubt. Thankfully, the community of fans which had grown up around the game by this point was able to boost that figure to around $963,000, triggering a clause in Indiegogo's terms and conditions which permits campaigns to receive a 20 day extension if they reach more than 60 percent of their goal in the initial 40 days. At the time of writing $1,915,000 has now been raised – a remarkable reversal of fortune, and Bartholow knows it.

"A lot of this came from our amazing community, which spontaneously organised to get us more outreach and exposure," he explains. Already passionate about Lab Zero's vision, its fan base was instrumental in spreading the word online and giving the campaign the momentum it needed to reach its funding goal, and beyond. "We mentioned that an extension might be possible, and [the fans] took that info and ran with it to help us reach that goal," Bartholow continues. "While it would’ve been nice if the ride was smoother and shorter, we’re overjoyed that our community came together to get us the campaign extension and, of course, hit the final goal and the first two stretch goals."

Lab Zero is no stranger to adversity – or crowdfunding, for that matter. The company was established in 2012 after Reverge Labs, the original developer of the cult 2D fighting game Skullgirls, was forced to lay off the team. Lab Zero – largely made up of former Reverge staffers – would use crowdfunding to continue its work on Skullgirls franchise.

"The core creative staff behind Skullgirls was laid off as a result of our publisher’s ongoing legal troubles with Konami," says Bartholow. "I loved working with the team and we had so much more we wanted to do with Skullgirls, so with Autumn Games’ permission we took the game over. In March of 2013 we started an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to create more characters for Skullgirls. Initially, our goal was $150,000 to finish the character we’d started before being laid off, but it kind of blew up and we raised $829,000, enough to fund five characters. So Lab Zero’s only previous game is Skullgirls, but members of the team have worked on a number of high-profile AAA games in the past, such as Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and Scott Pilgrim."

Given the studio's experience with fighting games, you'd be forgiven for asking why Lab Zero decided to switch genres for its next title. "A lot of it had to do with the team wanting to spread its wings a bit," reveals Bartholow. "While we love working on Skullgirls, creating fighting game characters can be a bit of an assembly line. Another major factor, frankly, was business. There just isn’t a lot of publisher interest in fighting games in the west, so we had to branch out into other genres in order to keep things going. One publisher we pitched to asked us for something like Child of Light , which is a platformer / RPG – that immediately made us think of one of our favourite games, Valkyrie Profile, and thus the pitch for Indivisible was born. While that publisher ultimately passed on it, 505 Games liked it and agreed to help us make it."

505 Games is currently something of an indie gaming darling, and is already bringing Assetto Corsa and Adrift to consoles. "505 Games has actually been trying to work with us for a while now, but they never had a project proposal that made sense for us," Bartholow says.

"So when it came time to pitch Indivisible, we approached them and they acted pretty quickly to move forward on it. Unlike some recent crowdfunding campaigns where they’re raising money to 'gauge interest,' our deal with 505 Games is much more of a partnership. 505 occupies a space between a publisher and a distributor and they expect their developers to have some skin in the game. For most, that money would come from past game sales or investors, but not having either of those to draw upon, we chose to leverage our previous crowdfunding success to provide our part of the investment. Because we provided a significant portion of the funds, our backend is much better, and will help give Lab Zero a more stable future. And the more money we raise, the better the deal gets for us. It really is a very progressive partnership, and I think it speaks well of 505 that they were open to such a unique arrangement."

Indivisible's playable prototype on Kickstarter © Lab Zero Games

A striking mixture of "Metroidvania" style exploration and RPG action , Indivisible is clearly a title which has been gestating for quite some time within the collective minds of Lab Zero's creative team. "It follows the story of Ajna, a young girl raised in a remote village by her father," Bartholow explains. "One day her village is attacked, and in her attempts to defend her village she discovers a new power: the ability to absorb certain individuals into her being. This sends her on a quest to bring the attackers to justice, which naturally leads to her finding out more about her powers and discovering her true nature. On her journey she’ll travel to a number of exotic lands and fuse with more people, giving her new powers and insight into the world around her."

While the PlayStation-era Japanese RPG Valkyrie Profile proved to be a major influence, Lab Zero hasn't slavishly copied the gameplay, but has cherry-picked the elements it thinks suit Indivisible best. "[Valkyrie Profile] has more action-oriented combat, which was a good fit with our fighting game experience," Bartholow says. "Valkyrie Profile is a bit weird in that it abandons a lot of the things you expect in an RPG . Chief among them is the freedom to explore, because of the strict time limit the game is built around. So we wanted to remove that limitation and bring the exploration back into that. Since the game is 2D, Metroid-like exploration made the most sense, and it dovetailed nicely with the story we were working on at the time, since Ajna gains new weapons and exploration abilities by fusing with new party members. As for other inspirations, there are too many to list. We’re pretty well-versed in RPGs, so we’re pulling little things we liked from many games and putting them in there. For example, Chrono Trigger has some influence on what we’d like to do with gameplay, with battles seamlessly taking place in the game world, but mostly in how we’re approaching the storytelling."

And what a story Indivisible has to tell. Bartholow is clearly proud of the fact that the game is packed to bursting point with variety and feels it does a good job of combining genres. "The story and setting are pretty unique," he say. "While the core is inspired by Southeast Asian mythology and culture, it’ll explore a large world full of memorable characters. We didn’t initially set out to do this, but I think we may have ended up with one of the most diverse cast of characters in a game ever. On the gameplay front, there isn’t a game that combines the RPG and exploration elements quite like we are. While we’re pulling from a number of different inspirations, I think the way we’re synthesising them together will make the final product feel unique."

One way the team has been able to bring variety to the game is via the use of crossover collaborations, where characters from other, unrelated games appear in Indivisible. It's a strategy which is very popular among indie developers (as well as starring in Indivisible, Yacht Club's Shovel Knight is in Kickstarter smash-hit Bloodstained and 13AM's Wii U multiplayer title Runbow) and in Indivisible's case, gave the game a much-needed publicity boost during its crowdfunding campaign. "This idea actually originated with Joe Madueira, creator and developer of Battle Chasers," Bartholow says. Madueira's comic-book-turned-RPG was successful on Kickstarter last year, around the same time that Indivisible's campaign was active. "He reached out to us to see if we’d be interested in doing any kind of crossover, and we said we were. So when our crowdfunding campaign hit a snag, I started reaching out to Lab Zero’s friends in the industry to see if we could get some additional crossovers going in order to engage those games’ communities. These were all essentially handshake deals, with no money changing hands. We’re truly humbled and honoured that so many developers were excited to work with us on this."

Given Indivisible's vibrant storyline – which, according to Bartholow, will last between 20 to 30 hours – won't having these unconnected characters thrust into the narrative be quite jarring? "The crossover characters won’t have any place in the story proper," replies the Lab Zero CEO. "Dimensional travel is a thing that’s possible in Indivisible's expanded lore, so we figured that in the latter portion of the game you could recruit these crossover characters through a dimensional rift that opens in Ajna’s Inner Realm. While they might have a quest to recruit or power them up, they’re strictly bonus content to let players experiment and mix up their battle strategies."

Indivisible's lush 2D artwork sets the scene © Lab Zero Games

As if to enhance Invidisible's RPG credentials, Lab Zero has secured the considerable talents of Japanese composer Hiroki Kikuta, most famous for the sumptuous soundtrack to the acclaimed SNES role-player Secret of Mana. Kikuta's name carries a sizeable amount of cachet with seasoned players, and Bartholow reveals that collaborating with such a legend has been a tremendously rewarding experience.

"Working with Kikuta-san has been fantastic," he says. "He’s pretty fast and generally gets things right the first time, which is great because iterating on something as nebulous and feel-based as music when you have to go through a translator can be gruelling. As for how he got involved, many Japanese composers now have US-based agents that broker deals for them. Kikuta was our first choice, and I knew his agent through my past in the gaming press, so we approached him about the project. We happened to have the pitch document already translated into Japanese, so we sent that over to him. Kikuta liked what he saw and knew our reputation for quality from Skullgirls, and that was that."

While sourcing the funds to create the game might have been quite a stressful experience for Bartholow and his team, they can rest easy in the knowledge that the money is there and 505 Games is onboard as a publishing partner. Over the next two years Lab Zero will shape and develop its vision, and is currently targeting the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows, Mac and Linux. Sadly, systems like the Wii U , 3DS and PS Vita are going to miss out, but Nintendo's forthcoming NX system is in with a shout.

"[Those consoles] just aren’t technically feasible, because this sort of 2D animation requires a lot of RAM,” he says. “There’s also the question about where those systems will be two years from now, when we expect the game to be done. We’re open to the Nintendo NX, but we need to know more about the system before committing to it. We have reason to believe that hardware can handle it, but we’re not going to make an announcement based on speculation."

It's tricky to say where a studio will be in two year's time – especially when it's laser-focused on its current project – but Bartholow admits that he'd like to return to his past at some point in the future. "We’d love to return to Skullgirls and do a proper sequel, but we’ll see what happens with that property between now and then. That’s two years or more out, so it’s way too soon to speculate about that." Indeed, the time for speculation is long past – Lab Zero has its hands full with making Indivisible one of the most unique and visually-alluring RPGs ever seen, and as you'll no doubt attest from the imagery on this page, it's well on the way to achieving that aim.