This really sucks.
As we expected, Mutant Football League didn’t meet its Kickstarter goal, and the project officially came to a close with today, garnering only $141,821 of its $750,000 goal from a little more than 1,100 backers.
“We’re in our last few hours and have had a great upsurge over the last two days but the fat lady is walking out onto the stage and she’s reaching for the microphone,” series creator Michael Mendheim wrote on the game’s Kickstarter page. “It’s been a tough month with a lot of ups and downs but this being my first Kickstarter and all – I must say, it’s been quite a fascinating experience with a lot of lessons learned. The best part of this entire experience was having a chance to correspond with all of you about the project and to hear your thoughts and concerns. Your words and support really means the world to me, and I give you all a heartfelt thanks.”
Mendheim isn’t giving up on creating the spiritual successor to Mutant League Football and has been requesting fans to complete a survey to help shape the game’s future. So far, more than 350 surveys have been completed, and Mendheim wrote that he’s been surprised by some of the feedback thus far.
“You guys said loud and clear you prefer the top down original style view for the game over a Tecmo style view, PC was the overwhelming platform at least for Kickstarter,” he wrote. “You prefer a somewhat cartoony art style over realistic and gritty and overwhelmingly want your undead skeletons playing football. The must have feature for the majority is full season mode and you really don’t care so much about physical rewards (we’re going to save a lot of money there) unless they are directly related to the nostalgia of the game. Finally, you want design input in the game above all else.”
While the nostalgic side of me likes the first game’s top-down style, I think the isometric view popularized by the Tecmo Bowl series would have fit in very nicely.
It’s a shame the game didn’t get funded in its first campaign, but we’re hopeful that Mendheim and the rest of his team will go back to the drawing board and come back with a tighter project that will prove more popular with the Kickstarter community. We definitely want to see this game created and will continue to report on its progress.
