Indie JRPG Project Phoenix was originally slated to come out in March 2015 but has now been pushed back to 2018.
In the latest Kickstarter update, the game’s team starts by clarifying that Project Phoenix does have a programmer. Previously, it was revealed that this programmer was David Clark, who had been working on Ori and the Blind Forest, and who the Project Phoenix team had been waiting upon to finish his other work commitments before he was able to join them full time.
It seems that this still hasn’t happened as it’s said in this Kickstarter update that the “problem is that his current work is delaying his full commitment here by about 2 months.” When Project Phoenix does eventually get a full-time programmer it is estimated that it will then take another 2.5 years before development reaches completion.
“That means we are expecting early 2018 for a finalized build and 6 months for testing after that,” writes the project lead. It is then said that the team has put out notices for more programmers to supplement the work of the lead programmer so that work can get going sooner rather than later.
The Kickstarter update then moves on to other news. First off, one of Nobuo Uematsu’s themes for the game has been arranged and is now pending approval. The Project Phoenix team is also prepping a video that will include Uematsu answering questions and so people are encouraged to send their questions in for him to answer.
Finally, the issue of refunds is addressed, with the Project Phoenix team saying that they are not offering any refunds for Kickstarter backers at this time. “To initiate refunds is to give up on the project since there would be no money left to complete it,” they write. “If we make the decision to call it quits then we will work out some kind of remediation with backers at that time. Until then we are pressing on.”
