Ghost Vanguard is a dark fantasy roguelike beat 'em up from solo developer Peiming Jin. The campaign closed at $35,000, 185% funded, with 806 backers, and generated over 7,000 Steam wishlists along the way.

 

We ran the full stack on this one: pre-launch paid ads to build the Kickstarter follower base, live campaign ads across Meta with custom referral tracking, press outreach that landed 59 articles including IGN and GameTrailers features, and Discord community management to keep momentum through the mid-campaign lull.

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The big opportunity sat in the reward structure. Ghost Vanguard's aesthetic draws heavy comparisons to Blasphemous, Dragon's Crown, Devil May Cry and Vampire Hunter D — and backers told us so constantly in the comments. So we built tiers around it. The $35 Legends Edition offered exclusive in-game cosmetics inspired by those recognisable influences, plus the digital artbook and soundtrack. The $53 Digital Collectors Edition added familiar weapon skins on top. The goal was simple: give backers a reason to spend more than the $20 base game by offering Kickstarter-exclusive goodies that nodded to the characters they already loved. It worked — average order value hit $44, and while the base tier had more backers (390 vs 210), the Collectors Edition generated more revenue per head.

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Press and discovery did the rest. The IGN and GameTrailers features pulled over 80,000 combined views, contributing roughly 6,000 wishlists and 80 backers — modest conversion in the short term, but serious long-term value banked for the Steam launch. Organic Kickstarter discovery, boosted by ad-driven awareness, BackerKit, and our retargeting campaigns made up the top referral sources, with a final-three-days push of 174 backers carrying the campaign well past its goal. Ghost Vanguard started with a small following and ended with a funded game, a 7,000-wishlist head start, and proof that the right reward design turns nostalgia into revenue.