In what I can only describe as a display of biblical hubris, The Day Before developers have announced a third game, instead of going quietly into that good night.
In case you're unfamiliar, Fntastic are the people who made one of the highest-profile gaming disasters in recent memory, the ones who shipped a game that saw its studio closed (temporarily, as this article suggests) within four days. It's the studio that made a game no-one on the team seemed to understand the nature of during development, finding out it was an MMO via their own trailers. These are the absolute wunderkinds who pinned all of this on the "hate campaign" drafted up by "bloggers". Yeah, those guys.
After promising burnt fans that it had turned over a new leaf in September, Fntastic drummed up a Kickstarter for a game called "Escape Factory", a "physics-based multiplayer co-op escape game" that we'll never get to see—the Kickstarter was a dud. It raised a whopping total of around 3,000 SGD—roughly $2,270—out of its 20,000 SGD goal. It seems Fntastic's very public, meandering, and chaotic debacle worked in direct opposition to its "transparency policy". The public remains unconvinced.
The studio declared the game's cancellation on X and, staggeringly, proceeded to announce a third game in the exact same post. This new project you're meant to get excited about ("exactly what you've been waiting for", Fntastic alleges) is an action-horror prop hunt game called ITEMS—fwee! That was the sound of the world's saddest party horn. I also want to take a moment to point out that, prior to The Day Before, Fntastic actually had a prop hunt game called Propnight, which it shut down. I guess it's never too late to start over. Here's the full statement:
Okay, look. In all fairness, Fntastic hasn't released a new Kickstarter just yet, and it's promised what's left of its community that players should "get the chance to play and test the game in advance". The studio might have realised that Kickstarters are never going to work, which shows some degree of self-awareness. In the meantime, Fntastic will also be making mobile games to help shore up its coffers in the quest to "create the game of your dreams," a statement I'm not sure has ever been used to describe prop hunt.
Having successfully waded up to the town stocks and plonked its head and wrists in them, the court of public opinion has shown up to throw tomatoes at the studio with such fury it almost makes me feel bad for it. The replies are mostly a lot of pointing and laughing. "Put the fries in the bag already bro," writes one fed-up gamer. Brutal.
I want to believe that anyone can change, and who knows. Asmongold cleaned his kitchen recently, anything can happen—but Fntastic probably needs to walk the actual walk before it goes to the Kickstarter well again. Bare minimum, I'm impressed by the tenacity. This whole thing's like if those folks who built the Tower of Babel came back for a second go, got struck down three bricks in, and then decided to start laying blueprints for a third one. Let's see if anything comes of it.
