The Most Disappointing Games Ever Crowdfunded

Project Phoenix purported to bring together the best of both worlds by combining Japanese aesthetics with Western gameplay. Promising to be "a JRPG developed by JRPG veterans" with squad-based RTS game design, it was easy to get excited about the project. In 2013, nearly 16,000 backers pledged a total of $1,014,600 to the project, with the expectation that the game would be delivered in mid-2015.

There was one major problem, however — Project Phoenix didn't have a programmer. "We were waiting for [David Clark] from Ori and the Blind Forest to finish his work on that project," director Hiroaki Yura told Kotaku in an e-mail in late 2015. "However, that got delayed by 14 months...by the time it was April [2015], he was required to stay on as there were continuing commitments with Moon Studio that he cannot talk to us about." Still, Yura promised to find a replacement.

Fast forward to April 2017, and it seemed clear Project Phoenix would never rise from the ashes. "We expect to make our backers happy will require higher quality assets and more programmers," Lead Programmer Daniel Dressler wrote in an update. "To this end[,] we stopped investing the returns from our music business into art assets and instead drove them into a different smaller production, with further assistance from private investors. Should this tiny product succeed those private investors have promised to invest significant capital into Project Phoenix." Promises, promises.

Not every crowdfunded video game fails to see the light of day. Sometimes, they just plain suck — like Takedown: Red Sabre.

In March 2012, game designer Christian Allen launched his Kickstarter for Takedown: Red Sabre, which he pitched as a spiritual successor to the original Rainbow Six and SWAT 4. He only raised 35 percent of his goal, however, before he relaunched his Kickstarter campaign with an aggressive last push — which attracted former Call of Duty Creative Strategist Robert Bowling to both back and promote the project on Twitter. In its final hours, the project met its goal with $221,833 coming in from 5,423 backers. 505 Games stepped in to publish the project, and it debuted worldwide for Windows on September 20, 2013.

Too bad the game is terrible. GameSpot called it "tactical trash," writing: "Takedown: Red Sabre should be taken down from the Steam servers where it is currently being sold for $14.99...This is a game that should not have been released in its current state, and is certainly not one you should waste your time and money on." 

Want to learn how to actually make video games, just by playing a video game? Of course you do — and so did the 7,459 backers who pledged $170,954 to Alex Peake's Code Hero, "a game that teaches you how to make games!"

Sadly, Code Hero never taught anybody much of anything — other than to not give Peake your money. The crowdfunded game was supposed to launch at PAX Prime 2012, but the game went dark. For a couple weeks, both Code Hero's and Primer Labs' websites strangely directed fans to a page for Check and Raise Poker. "We ran out of money," Peake later explained to Engadget. "We've been building the website without asking for more and building the game without asking for more because we're getting close to finishing a lot of it and putting out a beta."

But the game never actually saw the light of day. Developers like David Lopez, who left his job at Red Giant Studios after being offered $55,000 a year to join the Code Hero team, ended up working for free. "I never got paid for the majority of my work, which was tons of money," Lopez said, claiming his only compensation came in the form of an $800 personal check from Peake after a $400 check from Primer Labs bounced. Backers also never got their rewards.

Code Hero's last update came on April 4, 2014, when the game's project coordinator announced that he was leaving. "Further updates will be up to Alex to arrange," he wrote. Don't hold your breath.

In 2011 and 2012, an action-RPG called Rival Threads: Last Class Heroes — which claimed to feature "stunning 2D visuals, fast paced gameplay and multiple story lines" — experienced not one but two successful Kickstarter campaigns. So...where's the game?

The TL;DR version of the story came in the game's last update on April 15, 2014. "This project is [temporarily] on hold and we will be offering refunds," Studio Kontrabida's founder Leo Molar wrote. "No, this project is not dead and no we are not bankrupt, however, due to some complications, we're sad to say we can no longer work on this full time."

Simply put, development on Rival Threads: Last Class Heroes ground to a screeching halt when the crowdfunded project ran out of cash. "We tried to raise a significant amount of money to not only work on Rival Threads," Molar explained to Cliqist, "but to execute with the intention of delivering it beyond the scope and quality promised on Kickstarter...We're talking console, mainstream attention worthy quality, instead of just the original mobile game quality we were originally aiming for...A game with the level of quality we were aiming for probably needs at least 10x the amount on Kickstarter [that we raised]."

Hey, at least he offered refunds. The same can't be said for many other projects on this list.

Claiming to be "the game you've always wanted," Yogventures was supposed to be "an open world sandbox adventure game featuring characters developed by Simon and Lewis of The Yogscast" — a Bristol-based media production company who found success on YouTube. Instead, it ended up being a case of highway robbery.

"The failure of Yogventures is a matter of deep regret for the Yogscast," the company told Eurogamer. "[We] put a lot of faith in the developer Winterkewl, including allowing them to use our likenesses and brand. However the project was too vast in scope to be realised and despite a huge amount of hard work from Winterkewl they have had to abandon it...The game as it stands it is not capable of being released and certainly wouldn't live up to the expectations of the people that backed the Kickstarter or pre-ordered the game."

So where'd the $567,665 crowdfunded by 13,647 backers go? Good question. Winterkewl Games founder Kris Vale isn't even sure. "The Yogscast maintain that the remaining funds they received were used to pay for the things they did for marketing of the game," Vale explained. "But honestly, we're just as confused as everyone else where the rest of the funds went."

As a means of compensating the burned backers, everyone who pledged money got a copy of TUG, instead — a game representing everything the developers "wanted Yogventures to be." Refunds probably would've been preferred.

Published by Deep Silver and released in 2016, Mighty No. 9 — a spiritual successor to the famous Mega Man series — was one of the highest profile crowdfunded video games in Kickstarter history. Unfortunately, it's also one of the most disappointing.

Despite receiving $3,845,170 in pledges from 67,226 backers, the game turned out to be a 5 out of 10, at best — a far cry from what Mega Man and Keiji Inafune fans everywhere were expecting. The original Mega Man games are considered master-classes in gameplay and level design. Mighty No. 9 is not. Even worse, the old Mega Man franchise had beautiful, albeit limited, graphics. Mighty No. 9 is just plain ugly, with horrendous voice acting and uninspired cut-scenes. No matter how hard you try, there's just no other way to spin it — Mighty No. 9 stinks.