I have some important updates for you regarding City of the Shroud - I wish I had better news for you, and it’s very difficult to write this.
First, the hardest news: the game will unfortunately not continue development past what’s already released. The game launched to non-existent sales, which we tried to counter with a large-scale update to improve the game and an additional round of PR - sadly, it didn’t work. We continued working on Chapter 2 until part-way through 2019, but by the summer, it became clear that the game could not be developed any further. We explored a few options to continue the story, but they never bore fruit.
I’m really sorry that the game won’t be finished, and I wish that weren’t the case. Despite our best planning, we launched at a time that turned out to be unexpectedly difficult (not just for us but for all indies), and the financial blow, not to say anything of the blow to morale, was so powerful that the project never fully recovered. Coupled with everything that happened throughout 2019, supporting development further was and is beyond my means - I've been trying to find a way to make it work, but I've exhausted all the potential options. It’s been a long road both leading up to and following all that, but please know that it was never our intention for the project to end before we finished.
I’ve said it many times before, but I want to reiterate: we are extremely grateful to everyone who supported us throughout the development process, and I am extremely proud of what our development team accomplished. Building - and releasing - something like City of the Shroud is an accomplishment in and of itself, especially with a team of our size and funding, even if the main game was never finished. It was amazing to see our idea for player-driven narrative come to life during our first Kickstarter campaign, and to relive a bit of that experience as we started building Chapter 2.
To try and keep this post as short as possible, here are some quick bullet points:
- The game will be made unavailable for purchase.
- Everyone who bought the game or backed it on Kickstarter will still have access to the game on Steam, and the online battle mode will continue to work.
- If there’s a way to let you see or play what progress was made on Chapter 2, I will update you. It is possible to play through all 5 story arcs, but the battles all use the same default group of four enemies and there are no rewards configured.
If you have any questions, concerns, whatever, please reach out to me through Steam and I’ll do my best to address them.
Thank you one last time for the opportunity to go on this journey, and I'm really sorry I couldn't see it through to the end for you.
