Remember that RPG Kickstarter project in 2013 that had a whole bunch of AAA game devs working on it? backers for Project Phoenix have just discovered they won’t be getting their game till 2018, according to the game’s devs.
For those who may not remember, Project Phoenix was a massive undertaking that featured AAA talent from former Final Fantasy developers and other big industry names. The project raked in more than $1 million despite originally seeking $100,000 to fund the project.
Developer Creative Intelligence Arts did have a bit of good news for the backers though, as they’ve finally hired a full-time programmer to work on the game. The bad news? said programmer can’t start for another couple of months.
“Current estimates place dev at about 2.5 years out from completion,” the update reads. “This is 2.5 years from the time we get our full-time programmer on board. That means we are expecting early 2018 for a finalized build and 6 months for testing after that.”
The game originally was supposed to ship by mid-2015.
https://youtu.be/JuHuEgBSo4g
However the troubles being faced by the project aren’t a huge surprise to those who have been following Project Phoenix’s progress. Earlier this year they stated they had trouble finding programmers, and later offered an update that showed the key components of the JRPG had failed to have any progress despite being in development for two years.
But all Kickstarter projects are not without risk; delays occurred and ended up setting back the entire project. This is on top of Creative Intelligence Arts not being able to issue refunds because “there would be no money left to complete it”. Ouch.
They’re not entirely without good news though, composer Nobuo Uematsu has almost completed some of his contributions to Project Phoenix.
Hopefully their next dev update has more good news for backers.
