When publisher Little Orbit took over the publishing and developing rights to Playdek’s KickStarted JRPG Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians, backers might have been left a little confused about the future of the game’s progress.
In the first update since purchasing the rights, Little Orbit provided a significant update on the future of the game moving forward and what will happen with the KickStarter page.
First off, due to KickStarter limitations, the publisher information on the crowdfunding page cannot be updated. The studio is working on a way to show that the rights now belong to Little Orbit and those interested can easily see them as the new publisher. Furthermore, the team does not have access to the official Unsung Story Facebook page due to a technical problem with the admin page.
Little Orbit provided a statement on how they are moving forward with Playdek’s original vision. The studio has reached out to Yasumi Matsuno, Akihiko Yoshida, and Hitoshi Sakimoto for references on how the project should continue from here. However, they have not gotten a response back from the three, so in the mean time the publisher must deliver a game. So the studio has stated that over September they will lock down “key aspects of the game in art, design, and story” and share them with the backers and fans.
In an effort to not spoil the story for backers and fans they will limit the deep details of the game and allow players to discover them on their own, but they did share a snippet of the game’s design:
**DESIGN SPOILER**
During our review, we came across a section in the World Overview about the magic system and how spells are cast. One of our designers found this section oddly specific. According to this section spells are more than just words, regents, or movement. A caster must “use a special intonation” to harness true magic by moving tone up and down through energy points in the body like octaves on a musical scale.That means that in the world of Unsung Story, the tone of a spell is crucial, and the most powerful spells are sung.
Lastly, the team has gone back and reassessed Matsuno’s original design and story and reconstructed the “game flow through each of the chapters and identified the cities, characters, and general themes” that they will be working on. Little Orbit plans to use Matsuno’s notes and concepts as the team moves forward in the game’s development.