The Day Before developer cancels Kickstarter after it whimpers out with $2,200 of funding, immediately goes all-in on a third game in the same announcement

(Image credit: Mytona Fntastic)

In what I can only describe as a display of biblical hubris, The Day Before developers have announced a third game, instead of going quietly into that good night.

In case you're unfamiliar, Fntastic are the people who made one of the highest-profile gaming disasters in recent memory, the ones who shipped a game that saw its studio closed (temporarily, as this article suggests) within four days. It's the studio that made a game no-one on the team seemed to understand the nature of during development, finding out it was an MMO via their own trailers. These are the absolute wunderkinds who pinned all of this on the "hate campaign" drafted up by "bloggers". Yeah, those guys.

After promising burnt fans that it had turned over a new leaf in September, Fntastic drummed up a Kickstarter for a game called "Escape Factory", a "physics-based multiplayer co-op escape game" that we'll never get to see—the Kickstarter was a dud. It raised a whopping total of around 3,000 SGD—roughly $2,270—out of its 20,000 SGD goal. It seems Fntastic's very public, meandering, and chaotic debacle worked in direct opposition to its "transparency policy". The public remains unconvinced.

The studio declared the game's cancellation on X and, staggeringly, proceeded to announce a third game in the exact same post. This new project you're meant to get excited about ("exactly what you've been waiting for", Fntastic alleges) is an action-horror prop hunt game called ITEMS—fwee! That was the sound of the world's saddest party horn. I also want to take a moment to point out that, prior to The Day Before, Fntastic actually had a prop hunt game called Propnight, which it shut down. I guess it's never too late to start over. Here's the full statement:

An announcement that reads: "Dear Community,We have received many requests for a prop hunt game (please also see the previous message with the poll), and after careful analysis and discussion with the team, we have decided that our Escape Factory project has not generated enough interest. Our campaign on Kickstarter is unlikely to reach our goal of SGD 20,000.With this in mind, we have decided to temporarily suspend work on Escape Factory and postpone it until a more appropriate time. As part of this decision, our Kickstarter campaign has also been canceled, and no funds have been collected.*However, your wishes are very important to us, and we are happy to announce the start of development on a new action-horror prop hunt game called ITEMS!This is exactly what many of you have been waiting for! Once we have a fully playable demo, we may launch a new Kickstarter campaign or explore other options for release. It's important to us that our players get the chance to play and test the game in advance.Since the development of ITEMS will require significant resources, we have decided to release mobile games in parallel to support the process. All funds generated from these apps will go directly into development. We believe this will help us create the game of your dreams.Join our Discord to follow the development.This message is part of our new transparency policy.*Escape Factory operated under Kickstarter's "all-or-nothing" funding model, which means that if the project doesn't reach its funding goal, no funds are collected from backers.You can find more details about this policy on Kickstarter's official support page." — (Image credit: @FntasticHQ on Twitter/X.)

Okay, look. In all fairness, Fntastic hasn't released a new Kickstarter just yet, and it's promised what's left of its community that players should "get the chance to play and test the game in advance". The studio might have realised that Kickstarters are never going to work, which shows some degree of self-awareness. In the meantime, Fntastic will also be making mobile games to help shore up its coffers in the quest to "create the game of your dreams," a statement I'm not sure has ever been used to describe prop hunt.

Having successfully waded up to the town stocks and plonked its head and wrists in them, the court of public opinion has shown up to throw tomatoes at the studio with such fury it almost makes me feel bad for it. The replies are mostly a lot of pointing and laughing. "Put the fries in the bag already bro," writes one fed-up gamer. Brutal.

I want to believe that anyone can change, and who knows. Asmongold cleaned his kitchen recently, anything can happen—but Fntastic probably needs to walk the actual walk before it goes to the Kickstarter well again. Bare minimum, I'm impressed by the tenacity. This whole thing's like if those folks who built the Tower of Babel came back for a second go, got struck down three bricks in, and then decided to start laying blueprints for a third one. Let's see if anything comes of it.

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.