Even with the limited supply (6 kingdom slots per server iirc), these kingdom packages sold out all but one server. The most coveted were of course the King/Queen titles, which had people shelling out a whopping $10000 for the chance to be royalty in an unreleased game. With social stratification based on medieval feudalism literally built into the system, there was no way around it the developers cheekily called it the “Dance of Dynasties.” There were multiple tiers of "pledges" and if I’m remembering correctly, the prices after the kickstarter were $500 for a Mayor title, $1000 for Count, and $3000 for Duke.
Wait, why did people spend so much money on this game? And how did the drama get so spicy?īy its own design the game stirred up drama even before release. As you can expect, this was just as poorly-received as his last announcement. Some of them even pledged over $20k on the game, and they weren’t going to let Caspian cut and run.Īmidst threats of legal action, on April 9 Caspian dropped another blog post, A Letter from Soulbound Studios to Our Community claiming that the March 24 post came from a “very emotional place.” He said that the community misinterpreted his intent, and that he was actually trying to communicate that he was still working on the game while looking for ways to secure additional funding. Community whales formed a 'CoE Lawsuit' discord and discussed plans for a class-action lawsuit, demanding accountability and refunds. In less than two weeks, the Washington State Attorney General’s Office reported they had received over 150 official complaints against Soulbound Studios, the most they had ever received for a company in that amount of time. Because of several factors I’ll cover in the next few sections, the community did not take this well. In his typical long-winded fashion, Caspian spent the bulk of the post outlining the milestones the team reached over the past year, but only in the last few paragraphs did he mention that due to financial stressors from COVID-19, they ran out of money and had to lay off the entire team, shuttering development of Chronicles of Elyria.
However, on March 24, 2020, lead developer Caspian made an announcement that rocked the community: State of Elyria: Into the Abyss (autoplay warning).
The game’s initial release date was a laughably unrealistic Q4 2017, so it was no surprise that this would get pushed back again and again over the course of development. Browse through their Developer Journals even without a background in game development, it’s clear that the scope of what they were trying to pull off would have been ambitious for a major studio, let alone a small crowdfunded team.
#CHRONICLES OF ELYRIA ALPHA KET SIMULATOR#
We’d be here all day if I went into detail about all of the game’s proposed features, because it’s like they were trying to be Crusader Kings meets medieval life simulator meets Harvest Moon meets survival game meets action RPG all at once. In terms of lofty ideas, Chronicles of Elyria was right up there with Star Citizen, but with a fraction of the funds.
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