One of the saddest sunsets of 2024 affected Kickstarted afrofantasy The Wagadu Chronicles. The MMORPG was Kickstarted by players for nearly $200K all the way back in 2020 and bolstered by backing from Riot Forge. But it launched early access before it was truly ready, and the early access curse struck again (and Riot Forge closing down surely didn’t help). Back in May, studio Twin Drums admitted to fans that it was out of money and would have to shut it all down. Worse, it apparently didn’t retain enough funding to finish printing and sending the physical TTRPG books Kickstarter backers had pledged for.
Well, we’ve got a little bit of an update on the game, courtesy of a memo posted in Discord a few weeks ago. Here are the highlights:
- Players had asked Twin Drums to open-source the game’s codebase, but it’s not happening. “[T]he idea was considered by due to a number of reason (including some potential legal implications as much as some technical ones) it’s not possible unfortunately,” the community rep posted. No other reason was given.
- The game’s soundtrack, already available to backers, will launch on streaming services at some point; you can already snag it on YouTube.
- There is a “very high chance” that Twin Drums will release the remaining TTRPG book PDFs to the public as early as Q1 of 2025. “As far as I know a lot of what TWC is right now is 5e based due to the wide reach of that system,” says the rep. “So from what I know there are still plans to make TTRPG content.”
- Finally, the server is actually apparently still available to backers and hasn’t been fully shut down. “For now Wagadu will stay still till beginning of next year, as the fate of Twin Drums is officially being wrapped up,” the community rep says. “Next year there might be next steps for the world (most likely around the ttrpg) but nothing is decided yet.”
Source: Discord
