Lab Zero's incredibly successful Skullgirls fundraiser has finally come to an end today, after running for a full month. Fans donated a grand total of $829,829 to fund the development of various characters and helped the developer to meet all of its long term stretch goals. Yesterday evening, in a matter of hours, fans pulled together and donated nearly $80,000 to push the donation total from $750,000 to the aforementioned $829,829. The reward for this astonishing feat will be yet another DLC fighter, to be determined via fan vote.

So let's review. Fans contributed enough to the fundraiser to fund the development of five characters: Squigly, Big Band, Robo Fortune, and two more which will be determined by fan vote. Each of these characters will launch with their own theme song (composed by the amazing Michiru Yamane), stage and story mode campaign. Bonus rewards funded include a whopping nine new navigator or announcer voices to be used in the game and two additional stages: the River King Casino and Glass Canopy stages.

The fundraiser may be over but the excitement is just beginning. All supporters who donated at least $1 will now need to vote to determine which of the 30+ possible characters will be added to the game. Learn more about the characters and the vote here. Whether you donated or not, or even if you're not a fan of Skullgirls, there's no denying that something incredibly inspiring and influential has transpired over this last month.

The game's first DLC fighter Squigly - as well as the PC version of the game - are expected to be released by this July. I suspect it could be as long as a year before all of the funded characters are available for download, but each piece of content will be free for a limited time after release.