In case you forgot or weren’t aware, this time last year, Chronicles of Elyria was basically four devs in a basement who were being bankrolled entirely by the project founder’s savings. It’s been an incredible year for the fledgling sandbox MMO, as Soulbound Studios relocated to an actual studio, hired several employees, went to PAX East, and ran a highly successful Kickstarter campaign.
Chronicles of Elyria’s final dev blog of 2016 appropriately traces the journey that the game and its team has made this year while hinting at what is to come in 2017. The team said that between the Kickstarter and the online store, it has raised over $2 million for the project in addition to its initial $500,000 pool of capital. This comes thanks to a growing community, which is already 111,000 members strong as of November.
The team laid out broad strokes for 2017: “What’s going to happen next year? It’s hard to say. But what I can say is we will continue to keep our online store open for residual income, and we’ve already been approached by multiple publishers and investors. We’re in a good place right now financially and have more money than we expected at this point in the development process. We’re also in no rush to make deals, and are instead holding out for the right deal for us — and the right deal for you guys.
“2017 will see the growth of Soulbound Studios to over 20 people and likely a relocation to a nearby office suite with room to grow to as many people as as we need throughout the life of the project […] It looks to be a profitable year with us having plenty of runway to complete development and move into QA, testing, hosting, and publishing.”
