Sometimes a game garners a tremendous amount of attention, both good and bad, but sputters out before anything can become of it. Such is the case with Shadow of the Eternals.
Billed as a spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, the cult GameCube hit from prolific developer Denis Dyack, Shadow of the Eternals first appeared as a Kickstarter project — one of the more high profile ones in fact. However, a sizable amount of backlash soon formed around the project, due in large part to the campaign's poor messaging, and so the Kickstarter was cancelled and the project sought traditional funding. It also began a campaign through Steam Greenlight, which is still ongoing.
Then, Shadow of the Eternals reappeared on Kickstarter, this time seeking $750,000 and with a much clearer message of what gamers were investing in. However, that messaging apparently wasn't good enough as the project failed to reach its goal, only hitting about $320,000 in funding.
It was only just a few hours ago that Shadow of the Eternals failed to meet its goal, so we don't have any comment from Dyack or developer Precursor Games just yet. The title is, as was mentioned, also going through Steam's Greenlight campaign, so it could presumably find support there.
That being said, without the Kickstarter money there isn't much Precursor can do at this point. Perhaps they could take the game, which was targeting PS4, PC, and Wii U, and devote it solely to the PC platform.
While many Kickstarter games have failed to reach their goals, Shadow of the Eternals might be the first high profile project not to do it. After the Double Fine Adventure Game blew away its goal, many other developers took to the crowd-funding site for help, and many of them were successful. But there was also bound to be a tipping point — where gamers' interest in a proposed project would be less than the asking goal.
At the same time, there was obviously some interest in Shadow of the Eternals - $400,000 worth — which means that Precursor Games might be able to leverage that turnout into a publishing deal. It will likely be some time until that happens, but we're not counting the Eternal Darkness "sequel" out just yet.
Did you participate in the Shadow of the Eternals Kickstarter? Are you disappointed that the game didn't reach its goal? Do you think the game will ever resurface?
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Source: Kickstarter