At the end of September, we reported on the return of The Day Before developer Fntastic to game dev and Kickstarter with its debut of a new title and a “Fntastic 2.0” action plan. The studio promised to be more transparent and honest in its dealings and development, while the game is multiplayer co-op obstacle course platformer called Escape Factory, which has a demo available on Steam for players to try.
It turns out making that demo available ended up being a double-edged sword for the studio, as a game developer who goes by the name of Ocular Malice on Twitter claims to have uncovered that multiple free and paid-for assets were used to create the game, including a Unity multiplayer code base, visual effects, map assets, and inverse kinematics tech.
The post on Steam accused Fntastic of flipping these assets, but it was reportedly deleted by the studio; the dev archived the post on the Wayback Machine just in case.
Fntastic posted a “clarification on recent misinformation,” stating that all of the assets used to make Escape Factory were either made in-house or legally acquired. “For Escape Factory, we used assets for some of the VFX and a small part of the code. However, the art and music are 100% handcrafted by our team,” the post explains. “We encourage everyone to fact-check before spreading misinformation.”
Regardless, the crowdfunding drive for Escape Factory does not appear to be going well, with just over $2K of the game’s $15K ask raised so far, some of which appears to have been cancelled by backers or refunded by Fntastic itself. The studio says its decision to refund some pledges is meant to “ensure that all support is genuine and positive.” And judging by the ongoing discussions about the game – which are generally more accusations of censorship, negative demo reviews, and low-effort troll posts – we’re guessing it’s not.
