Way back in 2014 I spent $50 on a Kickstarter for a promising looking Indie Game called ‘That Which Sleeps’. Per my previous coverage, (1) the (delayed) game is supposedly an ‘evil-returning-god’ simulator where the player manipulates a living world to prepare for their return. The game had a great Kickstarter but since then developers have consistently failed to keep their promises. The game promised to beta in December 2014 yet a year on, 31st December 2015, no beta has been released. (2) On protesting and suggesting contact with the Federal Trade Commission (the US equivalent of Trading Standards in the UK) in October 2015, your author and others received refunds and were removed from the game forums.
‘That Which Sleeps’ gameplay video. Picture used for the purposes of criticism and review. There has been no beta and this is the second of four promised videos. The other two have not been released. Click for full size.
I do not intend to fully recap the developers’ discourtesy, lack of professionalism or broken promises here. Readers are advised to refer to my previous articles. The high points are that during the Kickstarter the developers claimed that the project was low risk because much of the game was already written. Kickstarter materials stated, “We have a working game” and also that a scenario viewer was complete and ready to release directly after the campaign, which ended in October 2014.
Beta was promised for December 2014, then March 2015 and it is now the 31st December 2015, New Year’s Eve. The supposedly working game is now in its second chronological year of post Kickstarter development. The scenario viewer has never been released although a partially functional map editor has been. After increasingly acrimonious forum posts from backers in October 2015, on 12/10/2015 developer Josh Perry promised some gameplay videos. There were to be three released at one week intervals showing the early, mid and late games. So far only one has been released.
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