Outcast HD Kickstarter falls well short of target, studio discusses "failure of the project"

Outcast HD developer Fresh3D has called time on its Kickstarter campaign after raising a still-impressive $253,694, despite needing $600,000 to proceed with the project. It has published a statement that addresses the campaign's shortcomings.

We published the first Ouctast HD gameplay trailer back in April. It gave a glimpse of what Fresh3D had been working on since it acquired the game's rights from Atari back in summer 2013.

In a new Kickstarter update, the studio made clear that plans to finish the game are not over, but that it is now appraising its options before proceeding.

"Unfortunately, despite a rather good start, the pitch and the content we presented were not attractive enough to convince more backers (especially those who didn't play the original game) and did not manage to reach the overestimated funding goal of $600.000," the team wrote.

This was our first KS campaign and we did a number of mistakes. Before launching the campaign, we knew that we were lacking content and the goal was high but we did not take the measure of their impact on the failure of the project.

"We should have set a lower initial goal from the beginning," it continued, "include more platforms, provide more attractive and more professional videos, lower the next-gen console stretch goal, post more updates with more attractive content, properly plan these updates in advance to free our time for promoting the campaign.

"We should have better explain the key features of the game and the high quality values of this remake compared to the original, do not mix old gen gameplay with new gen rendering, and ultimately, we should have shown a gameplay demo with the new characters or at least a representative trailer. Unfortunately we didn't have enough assets to produce a trailer due to tight financing and we expected this funding to really 'kickstart' the project."

The studio conceded that it could have planned the campaign better, but added that all of the previews, interviews and feedback from the community will prove invaluable to steering the project moving forward.

"Thanks to your commitment and the overall feedback we received, we truly believe, more than ever, that this project deserves to be done and we are more than eager to make it happen," the team concluded. "Will it be through another Kickstarter or another crowdfunding platform, paypal, private investment, some bank loans, public support, distributor deals or a mix of all that? We will see.

"Now, time is for analysis and thinking of the different options we have to finance this project given the economic reality. It may require some time and we'll do our best to share with you any significant information we might have regarding the next step."

We'll have more once Fresh3D announces its new plans.

Via Eurogamer.