You know what’s always fun? Seeing scammers flutter. Apart from that, there is news about the clown car developers of The day beforethat hilariously awful bait-n-switch 2023 game came from Steam’s Most Wishlist to Most Hatedover the course of an increasingly ridiculous series of delays, and the eventual release of a game that barely resembled what was promised. Then, like a crumpled phoenix, creeping and wheezing from the ashes, this year developers Fntastic returned with news of a new gameand with quite a few buyers, a new Kickstarter to finance it. What do you think?! Forget that game too, they have a new game again!
The failure of the Kickstarter for the Russian team’s new project – sort of Autumn boys-but-made-from-assets knock-off Escape Factory– was pleasantly inevitable. At one point, someone very amusingly offered about $10,000 toward the $20,000 goal, suggesting that the money could go to the people who went unpaid when working on The day beforebefore Fntastic got the hint that it might not be a real donation and rejected it. Because the crowdfunding campaign never managed to raise above $3,146 from 50 backers, Fntastic canceled the Kickstarter entirely earlier today, October 23rd.
Naturally, there have never been any updates to the campaign, even upon cancellation, and true to form, Fntastic has deleted all of its previous social media posts about the project, as that will make it disappear forever. (Unfortunately for them, Kickstarter doesn’t let you do that.) The X account was yet again completely wiped out, with the funny comment: “We have decided to move all our activities to Discord where we can work more closely with the community.” Or even better, can remove people who continue to point out their past.
All mention of Escape Factoryand the associated promises to change and improve have now been removed, although the The game’s page remains on Steamalong with a demo for download. (There are no public servers, and if you tried to make your own private server you’d need three other people you’d really hate if you wanted to play. It refuses to start with less than four people, and considering the demo peaked at a total of seven players in the last 24 hours, then your chances are not good Great.)
However, as of a few hours ago, the company’s X account has come back to life! Because, like a self-loathing therapist, they can’t help themselves. Fntastic has announced a new game! It’s called Articlesand appears to be a sequel of sorts to a game the team had some success with, 2021 Gag night. (With sales of 900,000 copies claimed, it’s curious that the game has now been completely removed from Steam.)
Want to know more?! Well, difficult, because the gaming site is a placeholder, and the only evidence that the game even exists a photo of two t-posed rendered modelsand most hilarious of all, a “Press Kit” that links to a download of nothing but the game’s logo, which appears to be the word “ITEMS” in something close to the Fortnite font.
A page-long letter on the updated X account states that “we have decided that our Escape Factory project has not generated enough interest,” which is why they have concluded that the Kickstarter is unlikely to succeed. No shit. That game is therefore “temporarily suspended[ed]”, but they immediately move on to the next one griff project.
…Your wishes are very important to us, and we are happy to announce the start of development of a new action-horror prop-hunt game called ITEMS!
This is exactly what many of you have been waiting for! Once we have a fully playable demo, we can launch a new Kickstarter campaign or explore other options for release. We think it is important that our players have the opportunity to play and test the game in advance.
Please do another Kickstarter, please do another Kickstarter, please do another Kickstarter, do another Kickstarter, do another Kickstarter…
But that’s not all! Another financing tool ITEMS is to also make mobile games at the same time, “to support the process.” Yes. Yuuuup.
In the few hours since the announcement, a few others have given calm and reasoned reactions to the news. “Are you fucking angry?” VikingNilsen asked. “If people give these guys money, they live in the same universe as unicorns.”
“You must be the most deceptive group of developers in history,” offered ItsMeNomad.
“100% delusional speedrun,” added ThatHartleyKat.
We will of course keep you informed of this ongoing story.
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