Misery Dev’s Post Apocalyptic Kickstarter Game The Seed is Out of Money

The Seed is a post-apocalyptic visual novel from Misery Dev, the team that created the highly regarded and punishly difficult Misery S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mod.  When it launched on Kickstarter in March 2014 The Seed was sold as a visual novel / RPG hybrid that tasked players with not simply surviving in a world of destruction and desperate wastelanders, but living with the choices they’ve made.  The whole affair sounded intriguing to fans of post-apocalyptic anything, which is what probably helped the Kickstarter for raise £20,923 against a £15,000 goal. Not a smashing success, but certainly respectable given the unique niche.

As time has passed we’ve heard quite a bit from Misery Dev about the progress of The Seed, and seem to have been progressing well.  All that changed once the most recent backer update was posted.  When a developer posts an update titled “Development Status” it’s almost never good, and this one was no different.

“Not in the form of technical difficulties and programming limitation, but rather in the form of private life mishaps, loss of data (due to break-in), and health issues. The list is long and it includes pretty much everyone in the team to some extend. We are a small team after all.”

An unfortunate series of events, but not necessarily something that would impact backers beyond the release date being pushed back.  Unfortunately the result of all the drama is that the team at Misery Dev are completely out of money.  According to the update 20% of the games’ chapters still need to be completed, a feat that seems significant to me but that the developers describe as “trivial.”

Misery Dev insists that they’re fully committed to finishing The Seed regardless of the financial situation, and are still focused on doing it right instead of fast.  So far backers seem to be mostly supportive, with no one freaking out too much, but it should be interesting to see what future updates look like.