Well, damn: Element Quest, that cutesy MapleStory-esque MMO we covered last month, isn’t gonna make it. Developer Musclebird announced on Steam last week that it’s taking the game offline and off Steam and “shutting down for a while” – an undefined while. The studio says that negative feedback, lack of players, and the loss of a key developer are all factors, though the lack of funding seems to be at the heart of it.
“We have spent a year developing this game, paid many freelancers for art, voice acting, and other services. Alongside some promotional push which costs money as well and research experiments. The game was never close to return-on-investment, we decided to never make it a pay-to-win, we do still stick to that decision, but that may have been one of the things that made the user-acquisition plan difficult.”
“Hopefully, the game will return back to service in the near future. With a better gameplay experience, a smaller target audience, no localization, maybe under a different name,” the studio concludes, noting that the game will stay up at least on Android “for some time.”
I gave the game a few minutes of my time when we did a giveaway code just a couple of weeks ago, and while it wasn’t my style, it was cute if simple, with a cash shop that wasn’t money-grubby at all, so it’s a shame to see it canned already since we know there’s certainly an audience for these types of sidescrollers. RIP.
