A Kickstarter Which Raised $1 Million Then Went Silent For Seven Years Is Back, Planning To Finish Production In 2031

In August 2013, a Kickstarter for a "JRPG with a squad based RTS game design, brought to you by veteran developers and creators from the East and West," went live. Project Phoenix quickly smashed its $100,000 goal, eventually raising $1,014,600 from almost 16,000 backers.

Regular updates continued for the next six years, but on March 26, 2019, CIA Inc. went silent. There were no further updates, and backers were left to believe they'd fallen victim to yet another Kickstarter rug-pull.

Over seven years later, TheGamer has learned that Project Phoenix has risen from the ashes, with its creator issuing a lengthy apology email to backers, vowing to finish production in 2031.

Project Phoenix Is Back, But There's Still A Long Road Ahead

Project Phoenix promised veteran developers from the East and West, and it looked set to deliver on that, with Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu penciled in to create the game's main theme. It also featured developers with credits on Diablo 3, L.A. Noire, Final Fantasy 3, 8, 9, 12, and 14, Skyrim, The Lord of the Rings movies, Metal Gear Solid V, Halo 4, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Street Fighter 2, and more. It's an impressive roster.

The game had lofty ambitions, with its Kickstarter campaign indicating that the team wanted it to launch as early as 2015 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. That didn't happen, though, and after a few more years of development and updates, it went radio silent. Until today.

In an email sent to backers and seen by TheGamer, Hiroaki Yura, director and producer of Project Phoenix, vowed that work on the game would continue, and that the "silence is mine to answer for."

"It has been seven years since my last update. I'm not going to soften that or bury it further down the page. You backed this project, you trusted me with it, and then you heard nothing for a very long time. That silence is mine to answer for. I owe you a full explanation, and more than that, I owe you proof that Project Phoenix is still alive. Both are in this update," the email begins.

That silence is mine to answer for. I owe you a full explanation, and more than that, I owe you proof that Project Phoenix is still alive.

"Years ago, I made myself a rule that I stuck to even when it cost me. I wouldn't post an update unless I had something worth showing. For a long stretch I didn't, and instead of filling the gap with mock-ups and promises, I went silent. That was the wrong call. A plain “we're still working, slowly” would have been far better than nothing, and I'm sorry I didn't give you that." He then explains the situation.

Stating that he promised the project would never stall because "the team is working on a royalty basis", its plan fell apart. It lost its producer, and it needed to hire one, but Yura didn't have the capital. Instead, he spent years creating and shipping games to funnel profits back into Project Phoenix, so development could continue there.

"I told you the project would never stall for lack of money, because the team was working on a royalty basis. That assumption did not survive contact with reality. We lost the programmer the whole technical side of the game depended on. The one who went on to Moon Studios and 'Ori and the Blind Forest', and rebuilding around that hole took years and money I did not have sitting in an account. Rather than burn through what remained and come back to you with nothing, I chose to step back and build a proper business first. One that could pay for this game the way it deserved, instead of running it into the ground. I built that business with my own means, not with what you had pledged, and its work is what funds Phoenix now.

"There is more to it than that. When I launched Project Phoenix, I did not fully understand what a production of this size actually demands. I do now. Building those studios and shipping those games is where I learned it, the hard way. It means the Phoenix you eventually play will be made by someone who has actually done this, not by the version of me who started it without knowing what he was taking on. That is a better game than the one that would have limped out years ago, even if it has cost us the time to get here."

The game also faced some significant redesigns, with Yura saying, "We went down a stylized redesign that I eventually killed because it had started to look like a mobile game, which is not what this was ever meant to be. The vertical slice we showed years ago did not land, and the people who said so were right."

Where The $1 Million Was Actually Spent

Later in the email, Yura also reveals how the $1 million raised on Kickstarter was spent.

"A good part of that paid for the work we did in the early years: character and creature designs, base models, the scenario and the world, and a large amount of Uematsu's music," he says, rebuffing allegations raised in 2017 that the money had been missued. "Some of it went into the vertical slice that did not work out. Not every dollar was spent as well as it could have been, and I am not going to tell you otherwise. But all of it went into this game and its production, never anywhere else. Since then, I have made sure the rest is funded properly, so that your contribution is not the thing holding it up.

"The scope today is bigger than what we first laid out, and the truth is, the original scope was never defined as clearly as it should have been. That is a fair criticism and I take it. What I will say plainly is that we are now putting far more into this game than the Kickstarter ever raised. As it stands today, no publisher or outside investor is steering it. Every extra resource comes from the studio I built so that we could finish this on our own terms."

The scope today is bigger than what we first laid out, and the truth is, the original scope was never defined as clearly as it should have been.

Yura also released a rough mix of Uematsu's main theme, performed by the Eminence Symphony Orchestra and vowed that all backer rewards will be honored before outlining the game's future.

"I am not going to hand you a release date I can't keep. Dates I couldn't keep are a big part of how we ended up here. So here is where things actually stand," he says. "We are aiming to finish production at the end of 2031, and the actual release date after that is still to be decided. I won't pretend otherwise.

"I know that is hard to hear after a seven year gap. I would still choose a target I can stand behind over a comfortable one. As we lock down things I can actually promise, you will hear them, and you will hear them far more often than you have."Thank you to avid TheGamer reader Deggers for the tip.

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Project Phoenix