YORK’S BAFTA award-winning computer game design company has launched its latest game after turning to crowd funding for support.

Revolution Software’s Broken Sword game put the business on the global map when it was launched in 1996, and now boasts more than ten million players.

Yesterday the business, led by designer Charles Cecil, launched its fifth game in the series Broken Sword – The Serpent’s Curse.

Revolution Software used crowd-funding site Kickstarter to raise money for the development of the game, inviting fans to invest in return for creative input.

The business sought to raise $400,000, but ended up smashing its target, with 4,032 people raising $771,560, all of which was ring-fenced to go into the development of the game.

Mr Cecil said: “Broken Sword 5 – The Serpent’s Curse has reunited key members from the original Broken Sword team, with layout artists from studios such as Disney, Aardman, and Universal who have created sumptuous, classically drawn backgrounds.

“The rich, lavish HD art, evolves the art-style so loved in the previous Broken Sword games. This has been a labour of love not just for us here at Revolution but the entire Broken Sword community too.

“We have been privileged to be able to make the game we’ve wanted to thanks to the generous support of our Kickstarter supporters, who really have given us the freedom to take the series to new heights. But this is only the beginning, we’ve a concluding episode due early next year which will complete the story of what I hope will be seen as our most ambitious Broken Sword game ever.”

Revolution Software previously used to rely on securing funding from large games publishers to create its adventure games, which cost about £1 million.

With the publisher’s cut, and the retailer’s share taken care of, it would end up making a loss, despite selling tens of millions of copies. Then three-and-a-half years ago, the ability to self-publish games to smart phones transformed the company’s fortunes, and it remastered its back catalogue for mobile, making a profit of about $500,000.

In 2011 Broken Sword went to number one on the Apple App store in every major European territory, achieved five million downloads, and was one of the world’s top ten most Tweeted keywords.