Woofle: The Red Diaries developer GriN have requested bankruptcy after failing to finish the crowdfunded project. The founder of the Belgian studio Wim Wouters discussed the lack of updates on the game’s blog.
Wouters said, “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”. According to the founder,“The team is now dismantled and [they] have requested bankruptcy unable to pay outstanding bills.”
The game was originally backed on KickStarter for $72,139 and made just over $22,000 more than its goal, but the developers were only able to finish the first volume of Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries as there wasn’t enough funding to finish the second volume. The founder elaborated on the matter as he states in the blog post, “I think it is quite obvious now that we will not be able to finalise production of Woolfe Volume 2. With the low rating of Volume 1, all interested publishers have backed off and we no longer have the financial means to self publish.”
In addition, GrIN were not able to give backers their rewards. Wouters said in the blog post, “The crazy thing is, that we have most of the rewards ready for postage. All the backer stickers and letters of enlistment just need a stamp. All the poster sets printed, signed and ready. The artbook is ready to be printed, the soundtrack is ready for distribution, the DVD case is ready for production. But we have literally no money whatsoever to pay for stamps, let alone print the artbooks and dvd-cases.”
Wouters has also expressed how he wanted to make a bigger indie game with a team of 6 to 10 people. He said, “The optimist in me led me to believe we could actually pull off making a “bigger” indie game. I really wanted to prove an indie game did not have to be rendered in pixels or stylized as a solution to cut development costs. I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong!”
The assets, the source code, and the IP of Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries are now for sale.
For the complete blog post you can check it out here.
Let us know what you thought of Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries in the comments below.
Sources: Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries Game Blog, Woolfe Kickstarter