tldr: The project is not dead yet. But it needs more time before we can start working on it again. Currently it‘s still paused.
Complete story
In March 2020, we were ready to complete our preparations for the Kickstarter campaign. Unfortunately, the Corona pandemic changed everything. In April 2020, Kickstarter discouraged new projects, and over the next few months, the platform featured mostly nonprofit projects offering their support to the pandemic.
Due to this delay, our Kickstarter partner for advertising and support has dropped out. Without such support, it’s almost impossible to successfully complete a project of this scale.
In addition, the pandemic had a direct impact on the daily lives of all of us. The three of us had started the project in 2018, completely in our free time. This worked well because we had an orderly rhythm of work and life. The year 2020 changed everything. Working hours, free time and our plans.
At the end of 2020, it was clear to us that we would not be able to continue working on Ren’s Underworld at that time. We founded a company that supports care facilities with software solutions to speed up necessary workflows, especially during the pandemic.
In 2021, we continued to work on the digitalization of healthcare, alongside our normal jobs.
At the beginning of 2022, we were sure that we could continue working on Ren’s Underworld again. The plan was to announce that work would continue at the beginning of the year. But time is running fast. Suddenly, summer is almost here.
But now finally here comes our announcement: We are starting to work on Ren’s Underworld again! It will certainly take some time before we can regain our rhythm and deliver regular updates, but we will complete the game one day.
What’s next?
First we switch to the new Unreal Engine 5 and its new fantastic lighting engine Lumen. Our homepage has to be reworked as well. After that, the work on the game will resume. Unfortunately there will have to be some sacrifices, even if we wanted to avoid them. Otherwise we would not be able to finish this project without the following changes:
- No more contiguous areas. There will be loading times between areas.
- Splitting into multiple episodes. For a future possibility of funding we split the game into smaller parts.
- Project-dependent development breaks. In order to continue to finance ourselves, we will have to focus on work on other projects at times.
That was a lot of text. We are aware that many of you did
not expect another update. But now we’re moving on and we hope you’ll join us
on the journey of Ren’s Underworld. Thank you for your interest and support!
