More than a year after surpassing its $500,000 Kickstarter goal, Subutai Corp.'s Clang sword-fighting game has stalled due to financial troubles.
"We've hit the pause button on further Clang development while we get the financing situation sorted out," the team wrote in a Kickstarter update.
While the game earned more than its desired $500,000 on Kickstarter, it hasn't been enough to last through development. According to the company, securing the next round of funding, "along with constructing improvised shelters and hoarding beans," is the top priority.
Despite its promising fundraising and expected early-2013 demo release, Clang has fallen victim to the struggling game industry, which recently saw the shutdown of major publishers THQ and LucasArts, among others.
"It is especially bemusing to Clang team members who, by cheerfully foregoing other opportunities so that they could associate themselves with a startup in the sword fighting space, have already shown an attitude to career, financial, and reputational risk normally associated with the cast members of Jackass," developer Subutai said.
Still, the project isn't dead quite yet. According to the update, the project isn't done until the core team has given up on it and moved on to other projects. Or the company declares bankruptcy.
"In the case of Clang, none of this has happened yet," the team wrote.
For now, the game remains an "evenings and weekends" project until additional funding can be acquired. But, in lieu of supporting Clang, the developer team suggested instead that interested backers lend some support to the STEM System, a wireless, modular motion tracking system used in video games and virtual reality. The project has more than doubled its $250,000 goal, and still has 21 days to go.
Clang made its fundraising debut in June 2012, when author Neal Stephenson (pictured) took a break from writing to help fund the sword-based video game. The original Kickstarter fund called for $500,000 for the development of a PC-based, sword-fighting game. Within the first two days, the effort raised almost $167,000 from more than 3,200 backers.
Get a closer look at Clang in the Kickstarter video below.