Oh, Unsung Story. You poor, poor mess of a Kickstarter project. Backers pledged $660,000 back in 2014, eager to see a new tactics RPG from the mind of Final Fantasy Tactics creator Yasumi Matsuno. Since then, it's been nothing but trouble and long stretches of silence from developer Playdek. It was put on hold in 2016, and though development seemingly continued after that, nothing materialized. And now if anything ever does, it won't be coming from Playdek. Today's backer update, the first since December 2016, announces that Unsung Story has been sold to another developer.
"Effective immediately publisher/developer Little Orbit has taken over all the rights and assets to Unsung Story from Playdek, and is now the project creator," says the update. "They believe strongly the game can be an amazing Tactics RPG, and they are excited to carry on and bring Matsuno’s story to life. They will be bringing you project news from this point on to update everyone on their plans for the game."
And there's more big news—unsurprisingly, despite the three years Unsung Story has been in development, Little Orbit will be starting from scratch.
Playdek apologized for not being able to complete Unsung Story, but said that "we believe the project is in good hands, with people who have the same passion for the game."
Developer Little Orbit has a number of games under its belt, including the likes of Adventure Time: Finn and Jake Investigations, Kung Fu Panda Showdown of Legendary Legends, and Barbie & Her Sisters Puppy Rescue.
A second Kickstarter update today, from Little Orbit CEO Matthew Scott, lays out the realities of Unsung Story as it stands now.
"Inevitably many of you will google us, and you may have your doubts - which is okay. This project has struggled. But give us a little time, and hopefully we'll surprise you," Smith wrote. The update continues:
"I met the Playdek team a couple months ago and got a firsthand look at the amazing work from Yasumi Matsuno. Simply put, this game needs to exist, so I am excited to be taking this project over and helping deliver it to the community... I recognize that this project is now more than 2 years late from when it was originally supposed to ship, but rather than jump into lofty promises, I want to level set expectations with a bit of both bad and good news.
"First the bad news. Little Orbit is starting from scratch. We have spent hours going through the Kickstarter comments and researching all of the project materials, and I feel the backers have made one thing clear – we need to focus on the original single player game and Matsuno’s design that was promoted during the campaign. And that is exactly what we are going to do. At this point, our primary goal is to separate the years of modifications and changes that were made while Playdek attempted to deliver something to their backers.
"Second the good news. And I want to make this absolutely clear - Little Orbit will honor the Kickstarter backer rewards at no extra cost. I can't know how frustrating this has been for the many fans of this game."
To Little Orbit's credit, Barbie & Her Sisters Puppy Rescue and their others are all real videogames you can play on your computer right now. Hopefully we'll be able to say the same thing about Unsung Story in the future.
