Unfortunately, I missed out on the fevered hype that surrounded the Kickstarter launch of Malevolence: Sword of Ahkranox, which promised to deliver what earlier roguelike titles like Dungeon Hack and Sword of Fargoal did, but then up the ante by making it infinite.
First-person grid-based RPG dungeon crawlers are something I get very nostalgic about. Ever since my neighbor introduced me to the relatively unknown Dungeon Hack on his (then) new Windows 95 desktop, I’ve been a big fan of the genre.
I’m totally fangirling over here.
All said, Malevolence was able to raise a staggering $33,506 of its relatively meager $6,000 goal. With a projected release date of December 21st, 2012, things were definitely looking up. Then time passed, updates became sporadic and still no release.
As a result, some began referring to Malevolence as vaporware, much to the dismay of developer Alex Norton.
On April 28th, 2016, a new backer-only update was posted, the first since March 13th, 2015, when a major update was announced.
Since then, Alex has gone on record to state that he:
- Has the game’s biggest update currently in the works.
- Recently hit a “line cap” with the programming language he was using.
- Was forced to write a scripting language to overcome the memory cap.
- In an unexpected turn of events, made the game more “moddable” as a result.
- Is now back on track with development.
Perhaps this is what the update was hinting at?
This looks interesting! *snore
Alex also admits that he hasn’t been very active on the Kickstarter page due to him sinking his scant free time into development, but that anyone curious about the game’s progress can visit the official forum for up-to-date information without having to create an account.
Keep up the good work, Alex. You’re doing awesome!
[…] accusations could be what finally prompted Norton to begin updating again. He posted a vlog on April 28th where he openly discussed the issues he’d been working […]