Back in August we announced how Playdek were handing over development of Unsung Story to Little Orbit. Unsung Story is the much-maligned Kickstarter game that's supposed to be a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy Tactics, made with the help of FFT creator Yasumi Matsuno, but ended up being a disaster seemingly due to Playdek's mismanagement of the project.
Now that Little Orbit have taken over the project from scratch, they've been busy trying to undo all the damage that Playdek did to the project. In their latest Kickstarter updates they've detailed a few previously unrevealed or unnoticed ways that Playdek mismanaged the Kickstarter campaign and Unsung Story.
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Everything we have on Unsung Story!
In their latest update for Kickstarter backers, Little Orbit have detailed some changes they're making to the project as a whole - all based on undoing the strange decisions Playdek made while doing the Kickstarter campaign. These include:
- Ditching the $5 add-on Game Package, featuring 3 exclusive stages only for the backers that ordered it. Three additional levels as an extra DLC purchase for backers only, that would never be available to regular players or even regular backers? That's not even part of any Kickstarter backer tiers? Even if you don't know how game development works, that's still a terrible idea that could only have resulted in rushed, half-hearted content. Why offer exclusive game content (3 whole levels no less), and spend funds and resources that they didn't have, on a very select group - 329 people in fact?
- Cancelling the Kindle and Windows Tablet versions of the game. Er, yeah. This was apparently a thing Playdek offered, and it should've raised red flags with everyone about how basic the game was going to be. Just over a hundred people requested these versions, and we're shocked it's that many.
- Shipping was never calculated properly. This should've been a really basic thing. We don't know too much about Kickstarter campaigns, but we do know when offering physical rewards make damn sure that you manage the shipping costs correctly. Playdek, according to Little Orbit, didn't. They offered international shipping for $15. Minimum basic international international delivery is $24. Little Orbit are consequently raising the price.
- Physical copies of the game are being cancelled as the costs were not accounted for. The exact words Little Orbit use are that they were "thrown in with little to no thought about shipping or extra costs". In other words, at best they were mismanaging the project, and worst they were just trying to get quick funds with no regard to actually making or sending these things out later. While this sadly includes the Windows edition, it also includes special physical versions for Linux and OSX, which a total of 12 people asked for.
The good news is that Little Orbit are correcting all these problems and have announced versions of the game for Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch, with backers able to choose their digital copy from one of the first two if they want that (Nintendo charges extra). While we haven't seen any game yet Little Orbit do at least seem to have the project back in control, even if they're doing it almost certainly entirely from their own funding - which makes offering refunds for those people affected by the mismanagement by Playdek even more magnanimous.
That we haven't seen any game yet shouldn't be a surprise, since Little Orbit threw out everything Playdek did when they took over the project. If you're planning on running a Kickstarter folks, try to manage costs before you make any promises, right?
