Games
The Day Before Dev Cancels New Game's Kickstarter and Immediately Announces Another Project
Key Takeaways
- Controversial development studio Fntastic cancels Kickstarter campaign for Escape Factory.
- Fnastic says it will now begin development on a new prop hunt game known as ITEMS.
- All donations for the Escape Factory project will be refunded, but Fntastic may start a new Kickstarter campaign for ITEMS in the future.
Controversial development studio Fntastic, best known for the now-defunct survival game The Day Before, has announced it is canceling its Kickstarter project for Escape Factory to begin work on a new prop hunt game known as ITEMS. While the studio is best known for the massively controversial title, The Day Before, Fntastic had previously launched Propnight, a popular multiplayer hide-and-seek game on Steam.
Unfortunately, The Day Before and Propnight were both shut down on January 22 after the studio announced its closure. While The Day Before was once a highly-anticipated release, its launch was quickly met with criticism and controversy as fans blasted the survival game as a “scam.” One of the many reasons the game was blasted with negative reviews was due to Fntastic advertising the game as an MMO, despite the fact that this was a game that resembled an extraction shooter. Along with its lack of promised features, server issues, and bugs, The Day Before went down in gaming history is a monumental failure.
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After announcing its closure in 2023, Fntastic made a controversial return in September, pledging to regain the trust of the community while simultaneously opening a Kickstarter campaign for a new title known as Escape Factory. Now, less than a month later, Fntastic has announced it is canceling the campaign, returning the money to those who had pledged, and starting working on a new prop hunt game. In a new statement on Twitter, Fntastic said its Escape Factory project “has not generated enough interest” but that it had “received many requests for a prop hunt game.”
Fntastic Is Working on a New Prop Hunt Game
Upon the studio’s return, it announced that it takes “full responsibility” for the controversy surrounding The Day Before and promised to fix past mistakes. Fans were skeptical of the studio’s return, especially given that it was asking for donations to support its new project. However, the Kickstarter campaign was operating under the “all-or-nothing” funding model, which means all money donated to the project will now be refunded as the studio has shut down the campaign.
While Fntastic hasn’t outright canceled Escape Factory, the studio says it is postponing it “until a more appropriate time.” It went on to explain that work will now begin on a new action-horror prop hunt game known as ITEMS, with a playable demo possibly on the way along with a new Kickstarter campaign. To support the development of ITEMS, Fntastic also said it has “decided to release mobile games in parallel to support the process” with all funds generated from the games going directly into the development of its new prop hunt game.
Fans of Propnight will likely be pleased by the news, but it’s important to be cautious as the studio has been involved in a plethora of controversies since The Day Before. While the game is no longer in active development, Escape Factory was even accused of being an asset flip shortly after its release, something that was also at the center of The Day Before‘s controversy.
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