The latest weird chapter in the saga of TitanReach’s development has been the game getting fully funded with no strings attached by a single mysterious benefactor. If that story sounds too good to be true, then you might want to listen to an interview video from YouTuber KiraTV, who hosted the game’s angel investor as well as Square Root Studios co-founder Unravel about the development.
The investor remains anonymous through the video, but Kira claims that money has indeed changed hands and further suggests that there are indeed no strings attached beyond making the best game possible and using the money appropriately. The investor says he stumbled across TitanReach’s plight via social media, did some research, and found enough reasons to fund the project.
“You have to be passionate. You have to be hard working. You have to be lucky,” the investor says, and after doing research he found a “hard working, dedicated, and passionate team, that have been trying to build something cool, but with very little resources at their disposal, and that ticked off [his] boxes of ‘passionate, hard working, and lucky.'”
Further details in the interview with the investor note that he is a developer himself, though he has never played TitanReach and has little time to play games due to business and personal obligations. He otherwise has no desire to provide input into the game’s development and is even open to funding other such gaming projects in the future, despite reportedly having done so with another unnamed dev studio that took the money and ran.
As for Unravel, he was also highly skeptical when first approached about the investment until he handed the investor his payment details and got double the amount of large sum of money.
“After I confirmed it was real, I took a 30 minute break, hugged my wife and kids, and walked around the house in disbelief, trying to process what just happened and what was going to happen. […] I was in a position where I could have blocked this person and bought a nice house, a Tesla, and not had to worry about my family’s future. I like to think I’m an honest and loyal person, but even in this situation I would be lying if the thought didn’t once cross my mind.”
Eight members of TitanReach’s original team are still around according to Unravel, but that number will be bolstered to a team of 23, all of whom will receive industry level wages instead of minimum wage and dedicated roles for more important positions thanks to the investment, while the game will not change its scope or adjust its feature set. Future alpha tests and dev blogs are planned, but scaling up development and other arrangements will take time.
Finally, Kira asked Unravel what he wanted to say to those who are still extremely skeptical about this new development, garnering this response:
“Let’s not get it twisted. It is too good to be true. I pinch myself hourly. This does not happen, ever. […] I’m not asking for your money so you have nothing to lose. Just believe there [are] wealthy people out there — at least one person — that does great things for the people that need it the most.”
Readers will recall that we began covering TitanReach in 2020, when it launched a $430,000 US Kickstarter that failed to fund, then announced plans for Indiegogo; when we used it as an example of crowdfund misuse, the studio insisted that its Indiegogo wouldn’t use flexible funding. But that campaign never materialized, and the studio announced the game needed funding or it “was all over.” Then the team released a flexible-funding credit storefront anyway, followed by a stealth-retracted statement about working conditions and pay. In spring 2021, the game hit paid early access, though it went F2P this past summer. Just a few weeks after releasing an ambitious roadmap and plans to launch in 2022, the team admitted that it was out of cash and development had been halted. Now, it’s back on again.
