“It’s hard to post updates to a campaign, knowing it’s unlikely to succeed.”
That’s where the Kickstarter campaign for GRIP has headed — right into the ditch.
Despite looking like the awesome spiritual successor to the combat racer Rollcage, Caged Element has cancelled their crowdfunding campaign for GRIP this morning after raising over $162,000 (or C$153,990) in just under a fortnight.
While the target looked like a healthy figure, it was well short of the almost $700,000 they needed to make the campaign work. Seeing that, the developers have followed the same Plan B as the Wreckfest (previously Next Car Game) makers: an Early Access release on Steam.
“We apologize for the lack of updates on our Kickstarter page; it’s hard to post updates to a campaign, knowing it’s unlikely to succeed,” Caged Element wrote in an update. “Yes, we realized a while ago (as did many of you) that things were not looking positive for reaching our funding goal. That said, we continued to push. We released a new action-packed trailer.”
“We did interviews. We tweeted, emailed and posted everywhere we could. Sadly, we just did not receive the exposure we needed to maintain the momentum after you all gave the campaign such a fantastic start.”
Caged Element will keep the crowdfunding going through Paypal/Stripe donations on their website, along with any funds they receive from purchases on Steam. All of the original pledge goals are available on the website up to the US$40 tier, with the first playable build to include one track (day and night-time versions), a single car, three weapons, two power-ups, modifiers, basic AI and one sandbox map to mess around in (much like the separate test map that comes with Next Car Game).
It’s a shame to see something that looked so fun fall a bit short of its target. But I’ve mentioned Next Car Game/Wreckfest a few times in this post for a reason — it’s because that game also struggled on Kickstarter before finding a second lease on life through Early Access. Hopefully GRIP gets the same second chance, because it’d be a shame to see combat racers go the way of the dodo.
Comments
12 responses to “The Kickstarter For GRIP Has Been Cancelled After Raising Over $162,000”
No! Noooooo! I was going to donate! I just needed time!
“Caged Element will keep the crowdfunding going through Paypal/Stripe donations on their website, along with any funds they receive from purchases on Steam”
The world needs more racing games like this but the public can’t always be the ones to make it happen.
Agreed. Bigname developers seem to be taking the safe approach and sticking to realistic racing games with new real cars. What about thinking outside the box and going nuts with it? Remember Wipeout and Extreme G and F Zero. Realism only take you so far and then it get boring.
AAA executed the futuristic racing scene by destroying Psygnosis.
I backed this game and really hope to see it get made. I went back and played Wipeout HD and Wipeout 3 (it has aged incredibly well), and while they aren’t exactly the same – there is a real lack of this kind of game. There is a market for it – and I hope Early Access provides them the funds to get them there.
Hope this does go early access or something… It looks much too awesome to let die.
Rebrand it as Rock n’ Roll Racing 3D, get funded in 24hrs.
oh wow i would of happily funded this, it looks great
If you haven’t already then you should check out Formula Fusion, a spiritual successor to the original 3 Wipeout games made by tDR (the guys that did the art for the first 3 games) and some old Wipeout devs. http://store.steampowered.com/app/389670
I bought this the week it came out.
Avoid: it’s far, FAR too early to be asking for people’s money at this stage.
This is a shame, I enjoyed its predecessor and the genre in general.
My last hope is that someone at Sony is smart enough to make sure a new Wipeout coincides with the release of the Morpheus VR headset.