Studio Camelia Shuts Down Just 1 Year After Raising $340K on Kickstarter for New JRPG

The video game industry is hard and ruthless, and Studio Camelia learned that the hard way this month. In June 2024, the indie start-up put forth a Kickstarter campaign for an upcoming JRPG they had titled “Alzara Radiant Echoes”. Intended to be a tribute to classic RPGs of the 90s and 2000s, the concept immediately gained a great deal of suppose. The studio managed to raise around $340,000, with the most recent donations coming as recently as February of this year. Unfortunately, all that was for not, as the team was abruptly forced to shutter their doors and abandon their project.

Why Did Studio Camelia Fall So Fast?

While I often highlight indie games and indie studios as being the lifeblood of the gaming industry right now, the reality is that it is also incredibly hard to succeed in the landscape currently. Studio Camelia is the latest to struggle, but you see even the most popular studios, Indie or AAA, laying off staff, ending projects, and even closing their doors entirely, almost if not even more frequently than you see a success story. While Alzara has quite a bit of fan backing through crowdsourcing, the reality is that outside funding from the industry simply did not feel the same, and the money quickly ran out.

As reported by PC Gamer and shared by Studio Camelia, the team let fans and backers know of the heartbreaking news on their Kickstarter page (you can read the entire letter and explanation here).

“We started the studio with our personal savings and managed to convince business angels, banks, and institutions who believed in our vision and supported us. We were even honored to be accepted into Microsoft’s Developer Acceleration Program.”

“With all this support, we had half the development of the game covered, and only needed to secure the other half through an industry partner. However, as you know, the videogame industry is currently going through a crisis. Many studios have been forced to close due to lack of funding, and over 20,000 workers have lost their jobs. Investors are now operating in a market where taking risks is discouraged, and they can afford to wait before committing to a project in order to reduce risk.”

Essentially, what happened is that the team used the money from the Kickstarter to create a demo disk, which they then planned to use to pitch the game to industry partners. The hope was that the demo, combined with the success of the campaign, would establish a proof of concept that investors would jump on. That did not happen, and with all the money raised gone, the well dried up, and Studio Camelia had to close.

The game itself is not completely dead, although its shot at survival is slim. Studio Camelia did say that it is possible the game could be picked up by a third party. If that were to happen, it would likely get changed around from its original intent, but perhaps the structure and bones would remain largely intact. Given that partners denied offering funding for another team to do it, though, it is unlikely that there would be a partner willing to buy it out and do all the work on their own. In other words, the “indefinite pause” is likely to be permanent, unless some drastic change occurs.

Backers Feel Lied to and Duped

Unsurprisingly, those who supported Studio Camelia in their Kickstarter are upset with the turn of events. For one, the team never mentioned using the money raised as a demo to try and gain more funding, when the funding could simply cover the game in the first place. Second, the team actually raised triple its goal, which in theory means the game should have had even more room than projected to get the job done. For many, the Studio obviously misused funds and did not have a clear plan for budget and development, although the team claims that this is not the case, and there was meticulous planning that simply did not pan out.

Due to copyright issues, Studio Camelia claims that fans will not even be able to play the demo, but instead released a trailer of gameplay shots, which can be found below. What is so mystifying is that the team did not indicate any financial struggles, leaving fans blindsided. Moreover, as PC Gamer writes, “Alzara’s presentation looks fully formed and fleshed out with gameplay clips, animations, character details, and promised collaboration with composer Motoi Sakuraba and character artist Yoshiro Ambe. Nothing about it… points to this being anything beyond a straight-up ‘give us money so we can make our game’.”

Fan reaction has been pretty harsh, calling out Studio Camelia for their poor communication and planning. One fan’s reaction is shown below.

“I’m honestly at a bit of a loss here. I backed this project thinking it was for a complete game, and something that already seemed well along in development. But after reading the latest update and watching the video, I’m left confused. There’s no real demo to speak of, just disjointed snippets of gameplay. And to make matters worse, the gameplay quality is actually lower than what is shown in the GIFs used in the campaign, which now feel more like short animations with a UI layer on top.”

“I would have expected significantly more progress after a year. From what was shown in the video, it seems like most of the assets were already in place during the campaign, with maybe a few minor additions. Honestly, it just doesn’t add up. It feels like the funding may have been used for things completely unrelated to what was promised, not even to build this demo, which we can’t see or play ourselves.”

In the end, those who contributed to the Kickstarter campaign are completely out of luck. We may never know exactly what happened behind the scenes at Studio Camelia, and how they used all of the $340,000, but the reality is that they liquidated assets and are closed, and there is no money to refund the supporters.

Kickstarter campaigns can be wonderful, a great way to support small studios and developers to get indie games out there that are enjoyable and exciting. This is a lesson to all, though, that there is no guarantee, and you are donating money at your own risk. Most work out, but you could be left holding nothing. If you choose to invest, make sure you are okay with losing it, because there is no guarantee the game you have fallen in love with will ever even release at all, let alone be as good as advertised. Studio Camelia is the first example of this in a while, but it will not be the last.