Super Action Squad Changes Name Again, Causes More Controversy

When it comes to crowdfunding you’ve got the good, the bad, and the ugly. In the case of Super Action Squad (formerly Super Retro Squad) the controversy surrounding the title falls squarely in the latter category. This Kickstarter has been one of the most poorly managed campaigns that I’ve seen and since it made funding three years ago it’s been met with several setbacks.

The last time we heard from Exploding Rabbit was just over a year ago when they were forced to admit that there were some issues and the $53,509 funded Super Action Squad was put on hold. You can read our previous coverage here. They went completely dark until last week when a new update was finally released for the public. Apparently for the past several months Jay Pavlina has been working on the game as a solo act. For whatever reason the rest of the team was dissolved without any word to the backers.

https://youtu.be/8-Ycy2V91ZQ

Going incommunicado, especially for this length of time, is almost always considered a death knell to a project. Backers get impatient when they don’t know what’s going on, and several have commented that they had pretty much written Super Action Squad off. While a fair share had demanded a refund, others decided to take the hit and consider this a life lesson. Even with the reappearance of updates there’s still a good amount of skepticism, if not downright hostility.

In order to help continue the development of Super Action Squad, Jay has set up a Patreon page for those who want to support the game. He also changed the name to Operation Pyxel and released a gameplay video for the “Castlevania level”. Whether the change to a single person development will bear fruit or not remains to be seen but I do have to at least give Jay some credit for continuing on despite all the drama that has occurred in the past.