14 DAY TRIAL // American McGee, the founder of Spicy Horse, says that the Kickstarter effort for his upcoming title Akaneiro: Demon Hunters is not a sign that it is running out of money, but an effort to take the most interesting elements of the game and improve them before launch.
The developer tells Kotaku that, “The game is 100% finished. The company is not out of money. The project was completed on time, on budget and will be shipped this month. It has been in closed beta with 25k people having run through it since late last year.”
A line has been removed from the Kickstarter page, which indicated that the Akaneiro team was out of both time and money and McGee explains that it was only used to indicate that the game was done from a development standpoint.
The company leader adds, “We’d like to take the game further and make it better. In the days when we were funded by a publisher, we would have asked them to review our ideas for additional features and approve (or not) a longer development cycle. 99% of the time they would have said no.”
The idea behind the Akaneiro Kickstarter is to show gamers what the Spicy Horse team could add to the game and ask them for the required resources.
The fans are then free to decide whether they want to contribute or whether they just want to enjoy Akaneiro in its current form.
The new features linked to Kickstarter are cooperative play, which will allow any players to group in order to face tougher hordes and bosses, a new system that will let them craft items from resources dropped by monsters and better community support.
Akaneiro is a straight up action role-playing game that uses a unique world and art style.