Inside the Kickstarter Games Castle at PAX East this month.

The day after Kickstarter launched in 2009, Eric Berlin launched Kickstarter’s very first Games project, offering to make nine interconnected crossword puzzles. "I'd love to see this work, if only to prove that puzzlemakers can connect directly with an audience that loves great puzzles," he wrote. He found his proof — in the form of 163 backers.

Since then, Games creators and backers have connected over and over again. In fact, we just topped a nice round milestone: 10,000 Games projects have been successfully funded on Kickstarter.

How did this happen? Well, it's all about people: 2.46 million of them have backed a Games project, pledging a total of $613 million. And 1.45 million of those supporters have backed more than one. Those are the backers we talk about when we talk about our Games community: the ones who return to Kickstarter again and again to discover and support new ideas.

Our thanks to all the creators and backers who made this happen. We’re marking the occasion by highlighting a few of the great games that your projects and pledges have brought to life. Our Games team gifts you this list of Kickstarter-funded titles you ought to be playing right now — plus some you should grab when they're released in coming weeks. Enjoy!

Scythe

Available Now

Catch up on some recently released Kickstarter-funded favorites. For instant videogame gratification, check out our Play Now page.

Scythe: This alternate-history epic was one of the most-anticipated board games of recent memory, and by all accounts it lives up to the hype. The community at BoardGameGeek just named it 2016’s Board Game of the Year.

Night in the Woods: The outpouring of love (and fan art) for this game could restore your faith in humanity (and the internet). “It is a patchwork collection of melancholic narrative, anarchic vandalism, and bass-playing,” The Guardian wrote last week. “It is brilliant.”

Secret Hitler: From a team that includes Max Temkin of Cards Against Humanity fame. They sent a copy to every U.S. Senator last month. We can’t imagine why.

Hyper Light Drifter: This pixelated wonder with a gorgeous soundtrack picked up the Audience Award and the award for Excellence in Visual Art at the Independent Games Festival this month.

Organ Attack: Remove your opponents’ organs before they remove yours in this twisted and surprisingly educational card game of medicine and pseudoscience.

Vast: The Crystal Caverns: A cave-crawling board game where you can play as the daring knight, the chaotic goblin horde, the greedy dragon, the cunning thief, or even the brooding cave itself.

Rain World

Coming Soon

Some upcoming games that we’re excited about, starting with the really-soon ones.

Rain World, out March 28: Adorable “slugcats” populate a post-apocalyptic industrial hellscape that’s subject to sudden downpours.

Thimbleweed Park, out March 30: The creators of Maniac Mansion have built a new world of point-and-click intrigue. Two washed-up detectives investigate a crime in a town on the edge of oblivion.

Yooka-Laylee, out April 11: The team behind Banjo-Kazooie creates a platforming adventure that looks like it’s made out of pure joy.

Pinstripe, out April 25: Explore the underworld in search of your daughter in a beautiful game that was designed, built, and soundtracked almost entirely by one guy.

Bears vs. Babies, out in June: Build fearsome monsters to battle a brood of babies in this card game from the team behind Exploding Kittens.

Narita Boy

Back These

Get in on the ground floor by supporting these live projects we love.

In videogames: Pine, Narita Boy (ending soon!), Mordhau, Starfighter Inc., All Walls Must Fall, and Mages of Mystralia.

In tabletop: Rising Sun, Dragoon, Cytosis, and 878 Vikings.

You can always dig around on Kickstarter and make some discoveries of your own. And for fresh Games projects every two weeks, sign up for our Games newsletter.