Chronicles of Elyria dev claims development is ‘progressing steadily,’ but no, you can’t see it

When last we heard from Chronicles of Elyria, Soulbound Studio’s Jeromy Walsh explained that the company was once again struggling financially and that he has been prepping for “another round of conversations with investors and publishers, as well as exploring opportunities for residual income for [himself] or the studio.” That reveal came after an April Discord stream during which Walsh bizarrely blamed the indie MMO press, including us, for covering Elyria’s many red-flag issues (you know, doing our job) as well as, inexplicably, for the crushing layoffs afflicting the industry (I assure you, if we had that kind of power or money, that’s not how we would use it).

In any case, public information on the current version of Elyria and its spinoffs has continued to decline over the course of the year, as Walsh apparently moved more and more behind closed doors and NDAs, which as we pointed out at the time was not in the spirit of the $1.3M Kickstarter. But now he’s finally back with a public memo, and he claims that Elyria’s pre-alpha is coming along.

“Development on Chronicles of Elyria and its pre-Alpha experiences, including Kingdoms of Elyria, has been progressing steadily behind the scenes. Updates in the Early Access channel on our official Discord have become more frequent and detailed, with some days seeing multiple updates. I’ve also hosted live Q&A sessions with Early Access and Alpha 1 backers, live-streamed parts of my development process, and posted check-in submissions of the work I’ve been doing. Things are rapidly moving forward, and I’m excited that some backers will be diving into new testing experiences early next year.”

Of course, since none of what is being described here is public, none of it is verifiable by anyone who isn’t locked behind an NDA. There’s also next to no chatter in the public areas of the Discord (Walsh says “while seemingly silent, I’m currently very active in the early access channel”), and while the Kingdoms of Elyria Reddit mod popped up a month ago to insist that Walsh was posting daily, other Redditors’ requests for clarity on what’s going on have been met mostly with crickets. At this point, until people come forward, we don’t really know whether this special backer group exists and how many people are in it, let alone what’s actually being demoed for it and whether it constitutes forward movement, plus some folks who Kickstarted for alpha access claim they haven’t been able to get in. Big shrug there.

The rest of the blog post details an update to the game’s website and a new account verification system that will apparently lock even more info away from public feeds, as reading the forum and dev blogs will require registration and purportedly allow the studio to “focus exclusively on the backers while informing the broader community of important news.”

Further reading: