Crowdfunded RPG Unsung Story goes back to the drawing board with a new developer

Playdek has announced to its backers that development has stopped on Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians, three years after it raised $660,000 in 2014. The crowdfunded title generated tons of hype following the involvement of the creator of Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy Tactics, Yasumi Matsuno. After three years, during which there were numerous broken promises and questionable behaviour from Playdek, it’s had enough of being terrible at this games development malarkey and passed on the burden of the game to Little Orbit. 

In a statement to its backers, Playdek attempted to separate itself from the game and bow out with some grace:

‘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. 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’. Judging by the comments that followed, this did not work.

Little Orbit is known for games such as Adventure Time, Barbie & her Sisters: Puppy Rescue and Kung Fu Panda: Showdown of Legendary Legends, and will now take over development and publishing of the turn-based strategy..  

There’s some good news however: Little Orbit has confirmed that all backer rewards will be honoured, writing in a new post on the Kickstarter page that, ‘Little Orbit will honor the Kickstarter backer rewards at no extra cost’, so that’s something. 

But the game will be delayed further as it goes back to the drawing board, and is developed from the ground up, in line with the original story concept. Which Is totally understandable. Little Orbit has done more in one update to claw back goodwill than Playdek had managed in two years, so that’s not too bad a start I guess.