5 Kickstarter Game Fails That Made Us All Paranoid

Yogsventures

What is it? An open world action game featuring characters made by Simon and Lewis of the Yogscast and developed by Winterkewl Games.

How much did it make? The initial Kickstarter goal was $250,000, but the total funding ending up being $567,665. 

What’s going on? Yogsventures never saw the light of day, supposedly because “the project was too vast in scope to be realized, despite a huge amount of hard work from Winterkewl.”  The compensation for the unreleased product was a Steam Key to Nerd Alpha’s game Tug and in-game rewards based on Yogsventures, which didn’t settle well with people and, looking at the comments on the Kickstarter page, is still something that hasn’t been fully resolved. Meanwhile, Winterkewl Games ended up closing its doors. Yikes.

Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians

What it is: Initially billed as a spiritual successor (aren’t they all?) to Final Fantasy Tactics, Unsung Story was unveiled at January 2014 by Playdek. FFT and Vagrant Story designer Yasumi Matsuno was listed as a big name draw and promised a story heavy strategy-RPG that fans have been craving for, with a promised release date of July 2015.

How much did it make? It ended its Kickstarter campaign at $660,126.

What’s going on? Earlier this week, Playdek CEO Joel Goodman wrote that the game was delayed to late next year, which isn’t really a big deal. There was zero communication up until recently, which threw backers for a loop, but that could’ve possibly been waved off. What broke the camel’s back is that the game received a major shift, going from story driven strategy RPG to PvP multiplayer game. Here’s just part of their new timeline:

Phase Three October 2016: Online skirmish mode against the A.I. will be added, allowing for A.I. balancing and testing that will include all of the feedback gathered from the online PvP beta game play. The Design and Art backer tiers will be involved with their respected character and scenario creation process.

Certainly not what backers were expecting to hear, and they rightly vented their frustrations and demanded a refund. That won’t be happening, as Goodman explained that they’re “delivering the game and rewards that the backers are entitled to.” If you’re a backer, sorry to say it– you’re in it for the long haul.

Red Ash

What it is: Launched early July this year, Red Ash comes to us from Keiji Inafune, creator of Mega Man and the presumably upcoming Mighty No. 9 (we’ll come back to that). Ash promised to be a spiritual successor to Mega Man Legends.

How much did it make? With a goal of $800,000, the Kickstarter only made $519,999. It looked like it was over for Red Ash until…

What’s going on? The game will be published by Chinese publisher Fuze Entertainment, so if it did end up reaching its starting goal, the money would’ve gone to stretch goals. Exactly what they are is something that has literally no answer right now. To be even more complicated than this already is, there’s an eight hour prologue (or is that the new subtitle for the game?) for the PS4, Xbox One and PC called the KalKanon Incident, and there may also be an anime in the works. Either way, Red Ash is happening, though not without people wondering where the hell the other Mega Man spiritual successor is.

Star Citizen

What it is: Equal parts space exploration, space combat, and first person shooter, Star Citizen may as well be nicknamed the Kickstarter equivalent to Half-Life 3. This space combat-FPS-MMO (try saying that five times fast) first arrived on the crowdfunding scene in October 2012 and currently has a slated release date for 2017.

How much did it make? Enough to rival Bruce Wayne’s yearly salary. The initial goal was $500,000, but currently (at time of writing) stands at a total of $89,267,802, which apparently also translates to 984,719 Star Citizens, according to the website’s stat page.

What’s going on? Still in development and having surpassed literally every stretch goal the developers can think of, Star Citizen now lives on as probably the most hotly anticipated Kickstarter title. Nothing can stop it, not even lawsuits from impatient Kickstarter backers. At this point, there’s nothing anyone can do but count the days until 2017. Assuming they don’t delay it again, of course.

Mighty No. 9

What is it? A spiritual successor to Mega Men from series creator Keiji Inafune and the folks at Comcept. It basically is Mega Man, just in (initially assumed) better hands than Capcom and with two player co-op involving Beck and his partner, Call. Get it?

How much did it make? The initial Kickstarter campaign made its $900,000 goal in only two days, but the money didn’t stop there. Stretch goal after stretch goal was added, promising releasing the game on consoles (and eventually handhelds), new levels, full English voice acting, and a DLC stage with Beck’s rival Ray. In the end, it made $3,845,170.

What’s going on? The development has been… kind of rough. Ignoring the whole Red Ash ordeal, the game was initially billed for a release this month with Deep Silver set to publish, but now has a date for Q1 of next year. Accusations of mismanagement have been plaguing the game for a while now, and as an apology for the delay, there was meant to be a demo for the game to backers and fans that also got delayed rather quietly. Their explanation for that delay was an issue with distributing the demo exclusively to backers via Steam and making it DRM free. It still hasn’t been released, and they’re trying to find a solution to get it to everyone (how would that work on consoles and the handhelds?), but this has definitely soured people on the game and Keiji Inafune in particular.

What Kickstarter games have burned you? Have you funded any projects, and were they what you expected? Let us know in the comments below!

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