The Crowfall Kickstarter campaign went live this morning, and thus far has raised (as of this writing) 57% of its $800,000 goal. Which, really, is a very impressive first-day performance for any Kickstarter project.

Of course, we’ve been privileged with a significant number of details about Crowfall already; ArtCraft built excellent buzz for the game via its well-appointed website over the last two months. As such, people have already had the chance to learn a fair bit about the intended design of the game. But, in case you have thus far not been paying much attention to Crowfall, here’s a good brief summary of the basic concept:

A seamless blend of an MMO with a large-scale Strategy game!

Players control the universe, to shape as they see fit. We call it a Throne War Simulator, and it’s different in three fundamental ways:

Characters are persistent, but the Campaign Worlds are not. Players are Immortal Champions, traveling between realms to fight in an eternal War of the Gods.

Each Campaign World is a server or “realm”. It exists for a limited time – typically 1 to 3 months — or until some win condition is met.

The Worlds are made of voxels (like Minecraft, only much less blocky) – which means the entire World is destructible. We are harnessing VoxelFarm technology to generate an endless succession of unique and interesting Campaign Worlds for you to mine, shape, conquer and destroy.

There are two types of Worlds in the Crowfall universe: the Campaign Worlds, which produce materials (stone, iron and wood) and the Eternal Kingdoms, which are barren of resources — but last forever.

I’m fairly confident that Crowfall will easily achieve its base funding goal, and I’m curious to see what sorts of stretch goals ArtCraft Entertainment have in mind for the game. Because really, it’s already being pitched as a very full-featured product. The game’s producers have already sought out funding for the game via investments, and have also contributed to it out of their own pockets; a lot of work has already been done, as we’ve seen demonstrated in recent weeks. The $800,000 base goal of the Kickstarter campaign, then, will go towards readying the following elements of Crowfall:

As I said above, this already makes for a very complete game; it will be interesting to see what stretch goals are announced for the project once it meets its base goal. And again, I’m fairly confident that Crowfall will achieve — and handily exceed — its funding goal. $464,010 (or more) in a single day isn’t a Kickstater record (we’re not talking about the Pebble Time here…), but for a game project it’s still darned impressive. (For comparison, Wasteland 2 raised $470,575 on its first day.)

Anyway, there’s plenty of information to take in on the campaign page, including some additional details about the different realms in which the worlds of Crowfall will exist, and some new information about some of the game’s systems.

Look…MMORPGs aren’t my thing, and open PVP is even less my thing, so I’m on the fence as to whether I want to back Crowfall personally. It’s not the sort of game I would play, but I’ll openly admit that I love the art style. And the concept sounds innovative; I would consider supporting in on that basis alone.

However, Crowfall may well appeal to a number of you, and certainly has its fair share of ex-Origin talent working on it (including Raph Koster and Mike McShaffry, who popped by the Ultima Dragons Facebook group to discuss Crowfall earlier today). So, do consider lending the project your support. The base buy-in is $34 USD, which includes access to the second beta. $60 gets you in on the first beta, and also gets you a copy of the soundtrack and a digital art book.