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Unsung Story may go untold as $660k Kickstarter ceases active development

Unsung Story cancelled

Unsung Story is a turn-based tactics game from Playdek, promising a mix of heavy RPG and stategising with little men to progress. It was kickstarted to the tune of $600k in February of 2014, breaking that goal by a further $60,000 with a due date of July 2015. Their last update prior to this weekend was in October, when they showed off a still-rudimentary combat system. Now they’ve come out to say that active development on the project has ceased, as a small internal team tries to maintain the studio via other jobs.

Thank goodness there’s all these good RPGs out there to play.

The project had some famous names from Japan attached, such asYasumi Matsuno who created Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy Tactics, both of which the game was heavily drawing from. While Playdek won’t say cancelled, it’s an indefinite hold with no planned release date currently.

The news comes out of a Kickstarter update postwhere the company says they lost several members of the development team back in October and have had to have a serious rethink about the direction the company is heading. Their current plans are thus:

“We now have one internal team capable of working on a single project, and for the financial strength of the company we need to focus on a few products in the near term that have the ability to get to a retail release before Unsung Story is able to.While this is a difficult choice to make, it is one we need to do for the ongoing financial health of the company.”

In other words, other work, likely contracted from other developers and publishers, that they can use to get some money in the door. As for Unsung Story, they’re working out what to do with it next:

“For Unsung Story, we will explore options for outside development help, and will look to see if we are able to bring on an outside team that can assist us in furthering development. While we aren’t assured this will come to fruition, we do want to make sure that we are exploring any options at hand that can make progress on the game.”

Which would say to me that they’ve ran out of money entirely. A difficult time for those who might now be wanting a refund. Playdek still want to make the game they planned beforehand, but don’t know when they’ll be able to do it.

As you can imagine, backers are none too pleased. If you were one, did you see this coming or is it a big surprise?

Thanks, EG.