A troubled project laid to rest
It’s never a good day when a game gets canceled, no matter how long or troubled the development process is. Many projects sit in limbo for years before the developers officially decide to drop them, and this happened last week to Mistborn: Birthright, a PC and console prequel game to the Mistborn series of fantasy novels by Brandon Sanderson, published by Tor Books.
As per the official Facebook page for the project, which was originally announced to be completed in 2013, and then pushed back further to 2015, Birthright appears to have had a troubled development cycle and a hard time getting off the ground. After losing half their internal development team in 2012, Little Orbit attempted to source other developers to keep the project afloat.
After finally finding a developer in 2015, the company’s retail distributors went under nearly taking Little Orbit into bankruptcy, and it was eventually decided that the company could no longer work on a project of that scale, and has to concede the rights to the license.
Curiously, Little Orbit is taking over development and publishing of Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians, the Final Fantasy Tactics like Kickstarter project that was notoriously botched by Playdek after numerous problems. Hopefully they will have better luck going forward with it, giving Unsung Story a chance to get properly completed, and vindicating Little Orbit in the process.
Hopefully for fans of Mistborn the series, someone else will pick up the pieces and give the project another chance. Best of luck to everyone involved.
[Header art used created by MarcSimonetti.]
