Chronicles of Elyria says it’s focusing on settlement development in the short term

Back in December, Chronicles of Elyria‘s Jeromy Walsh put out a new video for the game that left a lot of our readers puzzled. That’s because earlier in the year, developer Soulbound Studios abruptly announced it had run out of funds, laid off the entire staff, shuttered the studio, and ended development on the game. And though Walsh later backtracked and clarified the game was still in production with volunteer staff, the angry folks who’d backed it for $1.4M in Kickstarter funds and beyond pressed onward with legal action.

The December video and accompanying interview blitz were meant to reconfirm the ongoing production and scope of the current game, as well as to promise improved communication, which includes more videos. The second such video is out this morning, and notably, this video discusses the three phases of the game’s development prior to last year, from the physics to the alpha one systems to the alpha two territory management mechanics. The last chunk was the most popular with testers by far, which will influence future development timelines.

“We’ve shuffled our priorities to focus on the things that make the best use of our resources and provide us with the best path toward completing Chronicles of Elyria,” Walsh says. That’s going to mean swapping alpha one and two back around and putting more immediate emphasis on the more popular land and settlement ownership systems, which is what the team’s been working on in recent months, along with Elyria Chat, currency, trade, building types, government, criminal justice, diplomacy, and more. The adventuring mechanics aren’t going away, just on the backburner for now. More dev blogs and a roadmap are still on the way, but in the meantime, the video is below.

Further reading on the whole Elyria saga: