Battletech Kickstarter breaks $2.5 million in funding with one day remaining

The Battletech Kickstarter that Harebrained Schemes launched in September has now surpassed $2.5 million in funding. That's more than ten times the original $250,000 goal, and it means that the final stretch goal of PvP multiplayer has been achieved. And that will in fact be the final stretch goal: The studio said that any further funds raised will go toward "polishing the features and content we've already committed to."

At the same time, Harebrained does have plans to expand the game further after it's come out. "After that, any additional funds will go toward funding a Post-Launch Live Team that will continue developing additional features and content," it wrote in a Kickstarter update. "First among them will be Cooperative Multiplayer, which will allow you and a friend to face-off against AI opponents."

Harebrained's Battletech is a turn-based tactical game, rooted in games like FASA's Mech Commander (Harebrained co-founder Jordan Weisman, by the way, was also co-founder of FASA) and, prior to that, the Crescent Hawk games. It's set in the "classic Battletech" era of 3025, at the end of the Third Succession War and prior to the Clan invasion, when the Great Houses were still scrambling and scavenging to simply maintain effective Mech fighting forces. As the game stands, it will have a complete single-player campaign, as well as open-ended "mercenary" gameplay that will let players carry on indefinitely by accepting procedurally-generated contracts.

The Battletech Kickstarter campaign has a little less than a day left in it, wrapping up at 3 pm ET on November 3.