Unsung Story: Fall and Road to Recovery

Nearly 4 years ago, a Kickstarter project from developer studio PlayDek promised a tactical turn-based RPG along the veins of Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics. “Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians”, it was called. To add further to it’s appeal, the project included the involvement of none other than Yasumi Matsuno himself; one of the key figures of both those inspirations. They also managed to fuel the nostalgia flames by bringing in Akihiko Yoshida for art and Hitoshi Sakimoto for music; both of whom have collaborated with Matsuno before.

For many long-time fans of Matsuno’s work, this was a dream team. But this was the start of 2014 and people had begun to show signs of Kickstarter fatigue. A number of campaigns that came before it were already showing signs of how flawed the system could be. A lot of big video game projects like inXile’s Wasteland 2 and Peter Molyneux’s now-infamous Godus were delayed. It didn’t help that the tactical RPG genre was already quite a niche on it’s own.

By the end of their campaign, they only amassed $660,126 through their 15,000+ backers; barely going over their goal of $600,000. It was clear that they were hoping for more as their stretch goals went up to $2,400,000 for a live concert by Sakimoto. But while the amount they gathered was respectable (Critically-acclaimed Shovel Knight only received $311,502 in pledges), 2013 saw some of the largest pledges for video games in the platform’s history.

Torment: Tides of Numenera ($4,188,927), Mighty №9 ($3,845,170), Hex: Shards of Fate ($2,229,344), and Massive Chalice ($1,229,015) were all funded just the year prior among other titles that collected over a million dollars in pledges.

Not-so-fun-fact: Three of those games scored 6/10 ratings on Steam with Massive Chalice scoring a 7/10.

But their journey was far from over though. Over the first few months, everything seemed to go well but by the following year, it became clear that trouble was beginning to brew. After a four month gap in updates, PlayDek broke the silence on September 2015; listing down a number of challenges that kept them busy and announcing some changes to their original vision. By that time, they were already 3 months delayed from their promised delivery date.

Some updates followed over the next month as well as some AMA sessions that hoped to keep backers sated. But again, another 4 months of silence filled their Kickstarter page before providing another glimmer of hope that the project was still alive. Starting February 2016 however, their updates were even more sporadic than before.

By the time 2017 rolled in, there were no updates until August and it announced something that many had long suspected: PlayDek was not going to be able to deliver.

However, in their place, publisher/developer Little Orbit took over all the rights and assets to the project. This new beginning came with a caveat though: Little Orbit would be starting from scratch. They reassured backers that they would still be delivering the backer rewards and at no extra cost. The update emphasized that they were committed to delivering the original vision of Matsuno as promoted during the campaign.

It’s been 4 months since Little Orbit took over the project and they’ve been delivering regular monthly updates that’s been received well by many of the backers. In addition to the general monthly updates, they’ve also been posting smaller updates and details on their forum.

It’s been a rough and troubled journey so far but time will tell if Little Orbit will be able to accomplish what PlayDek originally set out to do. I, for one, certainly hope they can.