It has come to my attention that the Cyberpunk visual novel Echo Tokyo will be returning to Kickstarter yet again soon. I’ve honestly lost track of exactly how many campaigns there have been for this particular title, but I know that this will be at least the sixth attempt to get money from potential backers. As my own pledge to the only successful attempt that I gave money to has been long refunded, I got this news from an outside source and my first instinct was to just say “not again”.
I was directed to newly launched forums to get an idea of what to expect once the new campaign rolls around. According to one post, they don’t have a set launch date, but they’re working towards sometime in July. Along with it they also plan on having a demo ready, which I will admit should help their campaign. However, one way or another they’re still going to release something if it makes funding or not. My biggest problem with this is that the upcoming campaign will be for the “original vision” of an open sandbox game that I honestly wasn’t aware of.
From my understanding, if the new Echo Tokyo campaign fails they’ll just make a series of games in the traditional visual novel style. Which is what I was originally led to believe was the case when I backed the game. I knew that there would be some “side quests,” but I don’t remember ever hearing about a fully open world game until now. That said, I don’t plan on giving money to this one. Their potential asking price of at least £8,000 will be an uphill battle as that’s a lot to ask for, especially one originally touted as a visual novel.
