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[Bullet Club]

Six years after funding, Kickstarter success story Barkley 2 appears to be in bad shape

The sequel to Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, which was itself a fan sequel to 1994’s Barkley: Shut Up and Jam, might never see the light of day.

It’s been nearly four years since we had any real reason to talk about the sequel, officially titled The Magical Realms of Tír na nÓg: Escape from Necron 7 – Revenge of Cuchulainn: The Official Game of the Movie – Chapter 2 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa. All the way back in 2013 the game raised $120,355 through a Kickstarter campaign, with an estimated release date of December that same year.

Cut to June 2019 – well past that date – and it sounds like the project is in real trouble, if not cancelled outright.

The news comes from a series of posts on the Something Awful forums, which have been handily screenshotted by Twitter user Josh Bossie.



As the post explains, development has been messy, and most of the team involved at the beginning is gone now – from the outside, it looks dead.

Soon after, the official Twitter account for developer TalesofGames spoke up, after a year of inactivity, to explain that the game isn’t technically dead – but aside from that, the posts are accurate.





Whether or not we ever actually see a finished version of Barkley 2 is yet to be seen, but it’s not looking good. Hopefully the backers – especially those who pledged hundreds, or in two cases over a thousand dollars – have been compensated in some way.

Source: VG24/7

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

That's a shame, but it's been over a decade since the first game, I'd say the ship has definitely sailed.

 

[Joyful]

Sad i was actually excited for this game.
Reading the dev posts on SA it sounds like it got too ambitious.
Watching frankie make the pixel art was fun at least. kinda tangent but the dude has good taste in prog rock. learned a lot of great new bands

 

[EviLore]

He posted a KS update earlier tonight:

Hello to all justifiably restless backers. I think for this first post I want to cover what has happened recently and specifically why I haven’t updated in so long.

First: It’s my fault. I consciously avoided updating, even at the requests of other people who worked on the game. The reason more than anything was cowardice, but I framed it under a strategic reasoning that once we could start giving GOOD NEWS, then the delay would be much easier to swallow to backers. The good news came few and far between and I would continue to move the goal posts in response. This was stupid and wrong. I should have been much more transparent with how the game was going and the trials we were encountering keeping the work going. I am sorry.

You all are the reason we started working on this game with such a concerted interest in the first place and cutting you out hoping for a massive turnaround that would wash all the silence under the bridge was foolish to say the least. My hope is that while this is always going to be too little and too late, I can at least explain what the problems were.

Second: This is Liam, bhroom, and I started as the producer and was the one who wrote most of the updates. I am bort’s brother. Bort worked on the first Barkley along with GZ and chef. Most of you know this. I’m going to avoid a massive chronology for the time being, since I just want to get this out, but I am committed and answering any questions you all may have.

As the game continued to age, people left the project for lots of reasons, mostly due to taking jobs or losing interest. Everyone still working picked up slack as the game went on, but this game always needed competent and constant development in order to come out under the lofty pretenses we had established. This was my first game and lots and lots of problems at the beginning were due to my inexperience. I do not think this game was doomed. I do think we needed a big rebuild about midway through though.

Until earlier this year, the game languished as we didn’t really have a full-time person working on the things that really matter in the game: combat, main quest events, bosses. GZ was on the project last year and would work when he could. In those times we would make progress, but always, in my foolish mind, just short of being enough to update. As I mentioned, this was entirely wrong of me. I would write it off as under-the-hood work, that wasn’t the pop we needed for our big “hey we aren’t dead” post.

GZ is now gone and he is the most upset about the state of the game and how he left. I never wanted that to happen and had always wished that there would be some working solution. That is not the case. I think his points are perfectly valid and his frustration with the game is well warranted. I want to confront those realities moving forward too and make sure that if there is a solution where the game is fully completed and released, I don’t repeat mistakes that might jeopardize relationships I’ve already damaged or destroyed.

Finally, - and before this become too long for a first post back - I am slowly inching the game forward with the help of a part time coder named paperjack. We are both hoping that we can get the game in a better state in the coming months. I will update more about that soon and get feedback on more constructive things like how the game actually IS and PLAYS. I’m assuming there will be another few posts from me addressing your questions and concerns and giving more information about what all has happened to get the game in the predicament that it is.

I am going to attempt to answer all questions on twitter and directly to me in KS. Based on those questions I’ll formulate the next update which… I guess will be in no more than 3 days from now? How much B2 is too much B2 in your feeds?

Once again. I’m going to work hard to make this right and make this game.

 

[Bullet Club]

Barkley 2 backers get a lengthy but janky playable demo

Barkley 2's developers may have almost all left, but the game's sole maintainer has released a large, if rough, playable demo to Kickstarter backers.

www.rockpapershotgun.com