Unsung Story - In New Hands

To All Unsung Story Backers,

Thank you for the support you have shown to make this project happen. Through the trials we have had as a company over the last few years, Playdek has strived to keep the project alive, as we believe in the game and the story that Yasumi Matsuno designed to set it in. To that, we want to let you know that the project is going to continue forward, but our involvement is coming to an end.

Effective immediately publisher/developer Little Orbit has taken over all the rights and assets to Unsung Story from Playdek, and is now the project creator. They believe strongly the game can be an amazing Tactics RPG, and they are excited to carry on and bring Matsuno’s story to life. They will be bringing you project news from this point on to update everyone on their plans for the game.

Again, we want to thank you for your support of this project, and though we are sorry that we were unable to complete it for you, we believe the project is in good hands, with people who have the same passion for the game. Please send all questions concerning the project, backer inquiries and development discussions to kickstarter@littleorbit.com. Thank you.

Playdek

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A NEW BEGINNING…

Dear backers,

At this point, I’m sure you have a bunch of questions, and I can already see a flood of comments coming in. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to answer all of your questions today.

Please know that we are sincere in our effort to help, and we working as quickly as possible to get you as much information as possible. I realize that this has been a frustrating journey, and I'm asking for just a little more patience as we get going.

I would like to start by taking a moment to introduce myself. My name is Matthew Scott, and I am the CEO of Little Orbit. We started as a small game developer in 2003, and have grown into a small publisher in the last 7 years. To date we have primarily focused on retail with 20 titles on many different platforms working alongside Cartoon Network, Dreamworks, Warner Bros, and Mattel.

Inevitably many of you will google us, and you may have your doubts - which is okay. This project has struggled. But give us a little time, and hopefully we'll surprise you.

I am a gamer at heart, and my first love has always been turn-based tactics games. I met the Playdek team a couple months ago and got a firsthand look at the amazing work from Yasumi Matsuno. Simply put, this game needs to exist, so I am excited to be taking this project over and helping deliver it to the community.

I am also a huge fan of Kickstarter, and its ability to directly connect people with the creators they want to support. Since 2009, I have followed and personally backed many video game projects. I know each of these teams worked long and hard to live up to their campaign promises. Many of them managed to create amazing games that likely wouldn’t have been possible in the traditional system.

As we have seen this is a difficult business. There are so many things that can go wrong to sabotage even the most seasoned teams. But despite all the challenges, making games is what I love to do.

I recognize that this project is now more than 2 years late from when it was originally supposed to ship, but rather than jump into lofty promises, I want to level set expectations with a bit of both bad and good news.

First the bad news.. Little Orbit is starting from scratch. We have spent hours going through the Kickstarter comments and researching all of the project materials, and I feel the backers have made one thing clear – we need to focus on the original single player game and Matsuno’s design that was promoted during the campaign. And that is exactly what we are going to do. At this point, our primary goal is to separate the years of modifications and changes that were made while Playdek attempted to deliver something to their backers.

Second the good news.. And I want to make this absolutely clear - Little Orbit will honor the Kickstarter backer rewards at no extra cost. I can't know how frustrating this has been for the many fans of this game. But over the coming weeks we will be reaching out to make sure we have all the current information for each of you, so that rewards can be delivered properly as we make progress.

That’s all I can share for now, but we will be following up as soon as possible with more details on the game and our progress.

Thank you for your continued patience and support.

Sincerely, Matthew Scott

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First the bad news.. Little Orbit is starting from scratch. We have spent hours going through the Kickstarter comments and researching all of the project materials, and I feel the backers have made one thing clear – we need to focus on the original single player game and Matsuno’s design that was promoted during the campaign. And that is exactly what we are going to do. At this point, our primary goal is to separate the years of modifications and changes that were made while Playdek attempted to deliver something to their backers.

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Couchpotato said:

On one hand I'm ecstatic a new developer is taking over, but it looks given the first new update that the game will now take a few more years just to reach Alpha status.

On a plus note it's great they will be focusing on making it a single player game.

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joxer said:

While I expected a dud, selling it off surprises me.

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daveyd said:

Anyway from what I gather Little Orbit is primarily a publisher, not really sure if they even have their own development studio.. So it's possible they could hire some developers who actually have experience making tactical turn-based games.

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daveyd said:

They can't possibly do any worse than Playdek.

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screeg said:

They most certainly can! They could throw their own money at something Playdek got external funding for. It sounds insane to me. What is this guy Matsuno, the JK Rowling of RPGs?

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