Project Rap Rabbit will see the rebirth of narrative-driven rhythm-action. Set in an alternative version of 16th Century Japan, the world is growing more hostile as the populace becomes increasingly concerned by the growing diversification of their lands.

It is amongst this backdrop of growing isolationism and protectionism that a young rabbit farmer, Toto-Maru, steps up to unify his home. Using the power of Rap to draw strength from music, he finds he's able to influence the world's ruling powers through rhythm and rhyme.

Only by facing off against the world's rulers in epic rap battles is he able to counter corruption and bring peace to this divided land.

A few days ago Matsuura-san and Yano-san have launched a kickstarter campaign, looking for a whopping $1,102,921, and after listening to fan feedback and requests, careful and considered restructuring of Stretch priorities means that Project Rap Rabbit will now be made available to Nintendo Switch owners both physically and digitally if the $1.5million Stretch Goal is achieved.

In our previous update we explained how we've listened to your overwhelming requests for a Nintendo Switch version of Project Rap Rabbit. Today, we’re proud to unveil our new plan to make this happen:

1) Our first Stretch Goal for Project Rap Rabbit triggers a Nintendo Switch edition at $1,500,000.

2) Our backers will help shape what future Stretch Goals we’ll feature in Project Rap Rabbit.

3) Free digital soundtrack for all White-Label Edition (Digital) tiers and higher!

4) A new early-bird digital tier!

*Record scratch*

*Freeze frame*

So… how did we get here?

(Warning: Grab your hot drink of choice – this will be a very long one!)

Since the very first conversation we had during this game’s genesis, we’ve intended to be fully transparent with Project Rap Rabbit. From the get-go, we’ve set out to create a focused, hyper-polished game and to offer a completely open, honest and transparent Kickstarter campaign. It’s with that philosophy in mind that we chose to make some bold decisions with our Kickstarter launch.

We didn’t want to sugar-coat funding targets by presenting costs that wouldn’t cover the rest of Project Rap Rabbit’s development: although our expectations were that an artificially lowered project goal would likely generate a higher total funding level, we weren’t prepared to risk a situation where we weren’t able to fully cover the development costs necessary to ensure Project Rap Rabbit lived up to our promise. Project Rap Rabbit represents our vision for the future of rhythm-action – we would rather aim high and learn that not enough people shared our vision than trickle past a false goal, try to make the game without the true funds needed and end up compromising Project Rap Rabbit’s quality.

Similarly, we did not want to mask our Stretch Goal plan. We understand this goes against all common Kickstarter wisdom, but we felt it was vitally important to lay out our full plans for Project Rap Rabbit to highlight our ambition, and the true costs we’d need to secure to enable development. The last thing we wanted to do is hint at any additional formats or features, suggesting they would be small steps and then disappoint people with targets higher than they might have been accustomed to from other crowd-funding projects. We are not in the position of being co-funded by a secret fourth party: Project Rap Rabbit’s funds are coming purely from NanaOn-Sha, iNiS J, PQube and Kickstarter, and we therefore presented the full amounts necessary to develop certain features to their fullest.

Those costs were all based on several factors: development budgets, accounting for our studios’ expertise with the hardware and the tools involved, platform audience numbers (with which we run retail simulations to calculate projected sales come launch – at which point we need to be targeting a profit) and, finally, our intent to secure both pricing and release date parity across all console formats.

With these elements considered, we began forming the skeleton of our Stretch Goals. It made sense for us to zero in on the platforms we knew we could develop for without any unknown quantities arising, and to then present a plan whereby those communities would get a bigger game with more modes if Stretch Goals were met. Once we had that bumper experience in place, we ultimately wanted to give ourselves the breathing room to bring it all, wholesale, to Nintendo Switch.

This order was especially attractive because with every additional mode triggered through Stretch Goals, budget and resources would need to be weighted towards the Nintendo Switch version to fully optimize the new features: the multiplayer mode especially would require a lot of retooling. By pulling development for Switch forward, we ran the risk of needing to push multiplayer further back on all formats to account for these bespoke resources, thus pushing Project Rap Rabbit’s fullest feature set further away.

Seeing your overwhelming demand for Project Rap Rabbit on Nintendo Switch, we can hold our hands up and say that we got our ordering wrong. As a result, we have replanned our resources to offer a Nintendo Switch version of our game as the first Project Rap Rabbit Stretch Goal.

First and foremost, there is no change to our initial game’s core funding plan. Our core target of $1.1 million to bring Project Rap Rabbit to PS4 and PC remains the same to fully preserve the sanctity of Project Rap Rabbit. The only differences come into play as we enter Stretch Goals.

Our original Nintendo Switch target was the cumulative total of development of all features across all platforms, with the additional cost of porting on top. Restructuring all our targets enabled us to recalculate the porting costs and internal resources needed to bring Project Rap Rabbit to Nintendo Switch for $1.5 million.

That leaves us with three final points to address.

Firstly: What happens to the other Stretch Goals?

These objectives are still hugely important to us. When we begin to approach the point at which our Nintendo Switch edition is due to be funded, we will be reaching out to our community via surveys to see which of our Stretch Goals you want to see next. We want to know what you want as the next step in the Project Rap Rabbit campaign – an Xbox One version, more levels, extra modes or difficulties – and shape future Stretch Goals accordingly.

Secondly: A free digital soundtrack!

As a thank you to all our backers so far, every tier from White-Label Edition (Digital) and above will also now receive a free digital copy of the official soundtrack.

Thirdly: A new early-bird tier!

Effective immediately, we are introducing a new early-bird tier that will be available for the entire Kickstarter campaign: The Bootleg Digital Edition priced at £20/approx: $25/€24/¥2,950, which contains a digital copy of the game on any format.

We’ll be contacting all current White-Label Edition (Digital) backers direct to make them aware of this change.

Provided we meet our Nintendo Switch Stretch Goal, all tiers containing a copy of Project Rap Rabbit will be free to select the game on any format, with no price differences between formats.

Thank you for reading our essay and for your continued enthusiasm for Project Rap Rabbit! Please help us share the news and help us make the next evolution of rhythm-action!