Funded

The Kickstarter

A campaign that turned one developer’s prototype into a studio - and a door that has not closed yet.

Ranks of soldiers massed before a castle wall in the fog
KickstarterKickstarter Project We Love badge
188%
of the goal funded
$187,880
pledged in total
$100,000
original goal
1,152
backers

Selected by Kickstarter as a “Project We Love”, and closed above its original target.

Why Kickstarter

We needed to know the idea was real

Legacy of Valor did not start with a publisher or a budget. It started with one developer, a prototype, and a hunch that there was still room for a different kind of medieval RPG.

A hunch is not a plan. Kickstarter was how we found out whether anyone else wanted this game - publicly, with a number attached, and with no way to quietly walk it back.

It also meant the people funding the game were the people who would play it. No committee decided the direction. Backers did, and they have been arguing about siege tactics with us ever since.

How we got there

A year of showing up in person

Before Kickstarter there was a smaller campaign on the Czech platform Startovač. It did not raise a fortune, but it proved there was a real audience for the idea.

Then we took the game outside. At an event in Brandýs nad Labem we built a small medieval world around it - knights, tents, archery, and an early playable prototype. That is where we announced the Kickstarter.

The months that followed were the most intense in the project’s history. We showed Legacy of Valor at Game City Vienna, Comic-Con Prague, Game Developers Session in Prague and Poznań Game Arena 2025, and thousands of players put their hands on it.

Along the way it won Best Game at Game Developers Session Prague, and Best Indie Game and Best Indie Booth at Poznań Game Arena 2025. The campaign closed above its target while we were still on the road.

What it changed

From a prototype to a studio

The campaign, the community it brought with it, and the backing of several Czech investors were enough to take the next step. At the beginning of 2026, Black Banner Studios began taking shape as a real development studio.

What had once been a solo effort became a small party, and that party started becoming an army. More than 20 developers, artists, designers, animators and writers are working on Legacy of Valor today.

That growth paid for itself immediately. We rebuilt much of the original prototype, replaced temporary content with our own assets, and produced a new show-floor build that finally looked like the game we are actually making.

Late pledges

The campaign closed. The work did not

Kickstarter paid for the foundations. It did not pay for the whole game, and it was never going to.

Late pledges are what keeps the pace up between milestones. Every one of them is a month of somebody’s work that we do not have to postpone.

  • It keeps the team whole

    A studio of more than twenty people is a payroll, not a hobby. Steady funding is what lets people stay on the project full time instead of fitting it around other work.

  • It buys hard problems

    Large-scale army battles are our biggest technical challenge — thousands of soldiers with believable combat, formations, AI and performance. That is engineering time, and engineering time is the expensive kind.

  • It keeps us independent

    The more of the game the community funds, the fewer compromises anyone else gets to ask for. That is the whole reason we started on Kickstarter rather than in a boardroom.

  • Your name goes on the wall

    Every backer is recorded in the Heroes’ Hall, by tier, before launch. It is a small thing, and we intend to keep it accurate.

The tiers backers chose

These are the pledge tiers from the campaign. Every name recorded against them is on the Heroes’ Hall.

  • Collector's Edition
  • Deluxe Edition + In-Game Item
  • Limited Deluxe Edition
  • Royal Guard
  • Knight
  • Footman
  • Man at Arms

Availability and contents of each tier are handled on the campaign page.

See the Heroes' Hall

There is still time to back it

Funding did not stop when the campaign did - pick a tier on Kickstarter, take the rewards that came with it, and join the roll.

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