Detective: City of Angels becomes the latest hotly-anticipated game to go Kickstarter-only

Detective: City of Angels caused a bit of a stir when it landed on Kickstarter, thanks to its intriguing mystery-solving format where one player takes control of all the suspects in a case and chooses their responses during interrogations by the remaining group of investigators.

The upcoming Consulting Detective-meets-Raymond Chandler quickly broke its crowdfunding target, currently sitting at close to four times its $40,000 target with over a week left to run on the campaign.

But the game has now caused another stir among fans awaiting its release next September, and this time it’s not quite as positive.

Publisher Van Ryder Games has announced that Detective will be the first in its VRG Select series, a collection of games that will be exclusive to crowdfunding and “very limited direct channels” such as conventions and Van Ryder’s own online store, and will not be made available to buy in shops (outside of those that buy copies through the campaign).

Van Ryder said that it had originally intended to sell Detective at retail, it had opted to make the title Kickstarter-only for a number of reasons, including the high cost of production for the game.

“This direction makes a lot of sense for both us and the game and allows for more flexibility in many areas, in particular: the quality of the game components; being able to price aggressively compared to cost (note that the Kickstarter prices will be the best pricing); and being able to produce future expansions for the game at the same level of quality that you expect and Detective deserves!” it wrote in an update on the Detective Kickstarter page, adding that other games released outside of the VRG Select line would still make it into shops.

“We want to be very clear that we have the utmost respect for and very much understand the value of the retail sales channels,” it added, hinting at the recent decision by Conan studio Monolith to make its upcoming Batman: The Board Game exclusive to crowdfunding after calling retail practices ‘unfair’ and claiming the game would cost $250 to sell outside of Kickstarter to account for the cut taken by publishers and distributors.