There are no guarantees in big business – you can invest a lot of money in a company and its products and still end up with nothing. Recently, gamers yearning for old-school JRPGs learned this the hard way.
In 2022, a group of experienced developers founded Studio Camelia. The team intended to make ALZARA Radiant Echoes, a classic RPG in the style of Golden Sun. To help finance the project (Camelia only had a fraction of its budget at the time), the studio launched a Kickstarter campaign in the spring and summer of 2024; instead of the planned €100,000, it received €294,000 in donations. After that, in the winter of 2025, it also accepted additional donations and promised that, in the best-case scenario, ALZARA would be released in 2026. Alas, it was not meant to be.
On June 17, the company announced its closure, and the liquidation began a long time ago – on April 28. As follows from the message published on the project page, despite the finished demo version, it failed to find partners and publishers for Radiant Echoes. In total, the team collected about half of the budget needed to complete the title.
It also turned out that the studio did not resort to Kickstarter right away: at first, Camelia wanted to create a game the old-fashioned way (i.e. find investors from large companies), but the industry is in crisis, so it had to launch a fundraising campaign. The money raised was spent on producing a gameplay cut, with which the developers went to exhibitions – unsuccessfully.
We attended various conferences (Tokyo Game Show, DICE) to meet potential partners. There were serious discussions at the beginning of the year, but they led to nothing: despite the finished demo, an experienced team and half of the budget. We spared no effort and tried to hold on until the very end.
Due to the intricacies of the liquidation process, Studio Camelia will not publish a finished demo of ALZARA Radiant Echoes. The maximum that the team can do is release a gameplay video. The proceeds (those same 300 thousand euros) will not be returned, since they have already been used. The JRPG may yet see the light of day, but only if another team picks it up.
The story caused a very strong reaction in the gaming community. Some investors began to accuse the studio and its employees of fraud – they say they were given a lot of money, which ultimately went nowhere. Other players noted that such is life, and investing in Kickstarter projects always means risk without any guarantees.