Midora in action

Remember Midora? It's a Zelda-inspired action-adventure which was successfully funded via Kickstarter to the tune of $73,470, and while it didn't meet its Wii U and 3DS stretch goals, developer Epic Minds insisted that it would still come to those machines - it would just take a little longer.

However, there are doubts the game will even get made in the first place, as the developer has confirmed - via a rather unapologetic blog post - that the money generated via crowd-funding has run out.

Mhyre - Game Director for Midora and President of Epic Minds - claims that the money raised was "never enough to begin with", and that the issue is that more development talent is required to finish the game. The enigmatic Mhyre also states that his vision for Midora kept growing during development, expanding the scope of the game beyond what the amassed Kickstarter cash could support:

Midora is the kind of game that I have personally been dreaming about for years now. If you told me 5 years ago I would be working on such game, I would never believe you. The reason why Early Access has been delayed so much is simply because everything has changed. This is really hard to explain, especially when what you've seen so far doesn't even come close to what I have in mind for the game. I have a vision, and that vision keeps getting better and better. It also becomes clearer the more I work on the game with the team.

That vision takes a lot of time, and when I look at how much Midora has changed in just a year, I know for sure that we can beyond. I am not taking the game too far, I just want to create the perfect gem. It might sound insane to spend so much time perfecting everything or even starting over in some parts of the game, but that's just who I am, how I work, and I intend to make the best game possible. The story I began to write over 4 years ago is something that should be remembered, it deserves incredible action and gameplay, epic characters and battles, a fitting world with wondrous quests. I want Midora to be incredible in every way.

A release on Steam Early Access was expected to raise additional funds, but that sadly didn't happen:

Midora on Steam Early Access was our plan to get a better budget, to hire more people to work on the game. We are not bankrupt, but we know for sure we do not have enough to complete this game. We also do not have what it takes to release Midora on Steam Early Access in a satisfying state. We were in the same situation a few months ago already, but we still had hope to stabilize with Early Access and then just keep going. Continuing our work today on Midora means putting everything at risk (the team and the project) with a result impossible to predict. We feared something like that would happen, which is why we've been searching for solutions early to solve that problem.

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Those solutions include getting help from a publisher (something which Epic Minds has already ruled out), getting help from a private investor (no deals have been forthcoming at the time of writing), starting another Kickstarter campaign (also ruled out on the high probability it would fail) or raising funds by working on other games. The latter option appears to be the most attractive to the studio at present, and the blog post even goes as far as revealing that Epic Minds is currently working on a new project called Treasure Addicts:

We've had plenty of ideas on paper, ideas for Midora but also ideas for other games, ideas that grow when you think about game design. We picked one we liked, which is game that would be easy to make, and started working on it about three weeks ago. So far, we have made excellent progress on it. We cannot say when it will be out, but we'll be sharing some of the details on facebook and twitter really soon. This new game is called "Treasure Addicts".

However, things have moved quickly since that blog post went up on April 10th. Epic Minds - possibly in reaction the negative response from backers - has today posted an update to the Kickstarter page which claims that development is back on track:

After much debate and thinking, Midora's development will resume soon. A Kickstarter update explaining why and Early Access news are coming soon.

Were you one of the 3,359 backers who pledged support to Midora in the hope that it would come to Wii U and 3DS? How do you feel about this announcement, and the general confusion over Midora's future? Do you think indie developers should plan more carefully when working out their funding goals to avoid situations like this? Let us know what you think by posting a comment.

[source epicminds.net, via siliconera.com]