In early 2014, the company Playdek crowdfunded over $660,000 to make a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy Tactics alongside its creator, Yasumi Matsuno. Two and a half years later, they just can’t seem to stop breaking promises.
Most Kickstarter backers—myself included—have long given up on ever seeing Playdek’s game, aptly titled Unsung Story. But it’s still unbelievable just how many times the developers have said they were going to do something, then didn’t. Here’s a quick timeline of backer updates, starting with May of 2015, when Unsung Story started going off the rails.
May 15, 2015 - “Development on the game is progressing nicely. As we continue down this path we will finalize a development timeline to share with everyone later this summer.”
This did not happen. The next update didn’t hit until September 21, 2015, and in it, Playdek CEO Joel Goodman said the company had been facing financial difficulties and had to lay off several staff. Goodman laid out a new schedule for Unsung Story that promised a “PvP beta” in June 2016. This was surprising to backers, as the original Kickstarter had said nothing about PvP or even mentioned that the game would have multiplayer. Backers had given their money to Playdek in hopes of getting a Matsuno-led single-player game. Why was Playdek talking about PvP?
After a few incremental updates throughout September—including a promise that Unsung Story would still have a single-player campaign—Playdek made another claim:
October 20, 2015 - “Next month we will have a more thorough video going over the specifics in combat”
This did not happen. Unsung Story didn’t get another update until four months later, on February 6, 2016. In it, Playdek apologized for the lack of updates and said they had run into “development setbacks.” Instead of continuing to work on Unsung Story, the company would temporarily switch focus to a different game. “For Unsung Story, we will explore options for outside development help, and will look to see if we are able to bring on an outside team that can assist us in furthering development.”
A few weeks later, Playdek posted another update saying they hoped to have a beta ready by fall of this year. They also made another promise:
February 27, 2016 - “We will do our best to try and answer any follow up questions you may have, and will update you again when our product release is done in March.”
This did not happen. Playdek instead put out an update in April saying they had ramped up development on Unsung Story:
April 9, 2016 - “And so, we want everyone to know that we are close to being on track with our latest development plan, and should have some game specific development updates to start sharing in May. Over the summer, we’ll have new screenshots, videos and art to share, along with game play specific details about our progress on the character and battle systems, and the game world.”
This did not happen. There was no update in May, and although the summer is well under way, we still have not seen any new screenshots, videos, or art from the game. (Our last look at Unsung Story came in October of 2015, and it was very, very rough.) Which brings us to the most recent update...
June 28, 2016 - “We have fortunately been able to start getting some agreements in place for outside design assistance on the character classes and mechanics, and we will be able to update you on those specifics later next month... As of now, we estimate to have new art, screenshots and design details to show by September, and we will have another design update for you next month.”
This did not happen. It’s now August 2, and Playdek has yet to release a new update for Unsung Story. We’re over a year past the original estimated release date, and we don’t even know if anyone’s actually working on the game.
“We know that we have one method of restoring faith in this project, and that is through delivering on a great tactics game, which we intend to do,” reads Playdek’s June 28 update. Probably not gonna hold my breath on that one.