sisslethecat
It’s been a great time for the independent scene. Especially the indie horror marketplace, with KickStarter, IndieGoGo and more providing crowd-funding for projects the triple-A industry would be too scared to back themselves. But for every success story, there’s always a few that aren’t able to quite make it. Sadly, Andalusian Studios- the company behind an upcoming stealth horror game called Tangiers, seems to have run into a snag that’s just unraveling the whole project.
In September, the game’s lead Alex Harvey wrote a heartbreaking update to the game’s Kickstarter page, detailing how two of the game’s funding sources had fallen through, and now in an update from just a couple days ago he goes on to talk about just how tight the project’s belts have been pulled without that extra grease on the wheels. Apparently some replacement funding was found, signed off on, and then retracted without warning. Harvey describes the situation as “unfortunate at best”.
After countless hours and sleepless nights hammering out the agreement, putting together the requisite documents, projections, long term plans and keeping everythingwatertight on our camp, it goes askew from the other end.
We’re told that in spite of prior agreement, only 20% of what we’re due will be made available to us. They had less to hand due to previous commitments not coming to light and the weight of that fell straight on us.
Gah. 20% is not much to go on, regardless of what the full figure would have been. It’s hit the team with a blow they’re currently staggering from, it would seem.
Concerning day to day production, we’ve got just enough to scrape by through to release. But we’ve already kept our belts drawn several notches too tight in order to make the recovery leap from failed funding to replacement funding. To see release in the current circumstances would involve forcing the team to tighten further and to take an income that barely scratches minimum subsistence levels. Grossly unethical from a business perspective. And from a development & creative angle, a team struggling to make ends meet is going to struggle to finish their product with the expected standards of quality and flare.
Past the day to day, we’ve got the squeeze of covering auxiliary elements. The challenge of figuring out how to cover music, voice acting and writing. Can work on the game in it’s absence, but complete or tie things up without it.
The project still seems to be moving forward, albeit much slower than before. The planned September Beta has obviously been postponed, and it goes without saying that we probably won’t be seeing the final game by its original November release. Harvey has shared that he’s currently investigating a potential Slacker Backer initiative for interested parties to contribute, but in the meantime a Paypal tip jar on the Andalusian page is available for those looking to help the team.
We’re hoping something gives for the team at Andalusian Studios; it just isn’t fair that after such a successful KickStarter (£42,006 pledged) that they should run into problems now. We’ve got our fingers crossed for you, your game looks awesome.
[Source]
