2Awesome Studio raised €260,000 and still says there's no formula

2Awesome Studio's Altered Alma pulled in over €260,000 from more than 5,100 Kickstarter backers — more than six times its original €40,000 goal when the campaign launched in 2024. That figure, co-founder Alexander Santiago tells GamesIndustry.biz, is the backbone of the Barcelona studio's biggest project since it opened its doors in 2014.

Altered Alma is a cyberpunk-infused, open-world Metroidvania, and it showed up at publisher Critical Reflex's annual showcase last week alongside a lineup of hard-to-categorize indie titles. Development began in 2023, into an industry that Santiago says was still built on "big projects and big budgets."

"Altered Alma was a challenging and ambitious project for us," he says. "It's the biggest game we've done, biggest team, biggest scope, biggest everything. It's an open-world Metroidvania, so it requires effort."

How confident is the studio about launch?

Cautiously, but with evidence. Wishlist numbers are "looking really good," Santiago says, and the game featured in Steam Next Fest to what he calls a strong reception. The team also landed a spot in the curated Indie Arena at Gamescom — a selection he treats as a quality signal in itself.

"When you get in that, your game has something," he says. "We're going in the right direction."

Where does the money actually come from?

Not from one place. Since 2014, 2Awesome has stitched together Kickstarter campaigns, government funding, loans and publisher support. The studio has run three crowdfunders:

• Dimension Dive: €36,996 from over 1,000 backers, launched in 2017
• AK-xolotl: €132,807 from over 2,500 backers against a €15,000 goal, funded in 2022 and launched in 2023
• Altered Alma: over €260,000 from more than 5,100 backers, closing out now

Outsourcing fills the gaps. "It's not our core business, but we need to keep the lights on, so we provide services for others," Santiago says. "There is no one solution that fits all."

That service arm started almost by accident. For Dimension Dive, the team decided to handle ports in-house — a technical decision to gain know-how, not a long-term plan. The gamble paid off when Focus Home Interactive hired them to port Othercide to Switch.

"Then we got a reputation, and it spread by word of mouth," Santiago says. "'Ah, yeah, these guys deliver what they promise, say, 99% of the time, all the time.' That's quite unique in the industry."

Delivering 99% of the time is, by outsourcing standards, a flex.

What's next after launch?

A leaner sequel, most likely. Santiago says the industry has shifted toward "smaller budgets and focused games — doing one or two things really well," and 2Awesome intends to ride that current with a more tightly scoped follow-up in the Altered Alma franchise.

"We are planning for the next two or three years, which hopefully includes the sequel for Altered Alma," he says.

He's blunt about the limits of the studio's playbook, though. "I wish I had the formula," he laughs. "We don't have it."

The plan, such as it is: gauge the market, apply a decade of accumulated knowledge, and straddle both ends of a market where "more smaller teams deliver bigger successes." Whether Altered Alma's launch converts those wishlists into sales will tell us if the bet holds.