In a private update to backers, Tim Schafer has revealed that they are experiencing constraints finishing the Kickstarter Double Fine success story Broken Age, given the game's planned scope and due delivery date.
Since the Kickstarter ended with the company getting eight times the amount of the originally requested goal, Schafer pledged to use the funds to expand the scope of the game. Now, after reassessing the game's progress, he determined that it would take July 2014 to get just half the game done, and two years from now to finish the full game. Furthermore, he overshot his target and will now need more funding than the $3,336,371they received.
Schafer shares concerns that he did not want to go the route of another crowdfund or to have backers feel cheated. With this in mind, he has proposed to cut the game down into a two part episodic release, the first of which to arrive on Steam Early Access.
Under Schafer's new plan, the game will be arriving in January, not July, and buyers in Steam Early Access will allow them to fund the second half of the game by April or May. Backers will still get to play the game before Steam buyers do (as stipulated in the Kickstarter terms) and Double Fine will no longer be asking for more donations.
Schafer clarifies that they have finished designing the game and there will be no additional costs to hamper development. He also wants to make clear the team behind Broken Age is not working too slow. These revised plans are a consequence of the game simply becoming bigger than originally planned.
I took the news badly at first, but it's good that Schafer has been transparent to his backers about this situation and that he has already placed contingency plans in action. We should remember that Double Fine has a unique place being completely independent as a game developer, but with the size and needs of a AAA. Hopefully, these plans will pan out so we get a Broken Age game that fits all our expectations.
We addressed prior skepticism of the Kickstarter for this project.
