While not quite the most-funded failed Kickstarter – that dubious honour belongs to the disastrous Yogventures and the $568,000 that didn’t result in a videogame – sword-fighting title CLANG isn’t far behind at $526K. Of course, we already knew that the steel-clashing brainchild of author Neal Stephenson was in trouble, having been put “on pause” this time last year when his studio ran out of funds. He had, however, maintained that the motion-controlled game of blades would continue in some form, at some point. Today brings the not entirely unexpected announcement that this will not be the case. CLANG is dead.
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Yikes. It appears that Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson and the CLANG team have a bit of a mess on their hands. And by “a bit,” I mean the sort that requires years of clean-up and nearly extinguishes at least seven species of marine life. Here’s the skinny: $526,125 in Kickstarter money apparently wasn’t enough for the peripheral-dependent savior of swordfighting, so Stephenson and co were hoping to seek out a more traditional deal to bolster it – for instance venture capital funding or a publisher. So far? No dice. So the team has been forced to “hit the pause button” on further development in order to sort out a new plan of attack. They don’t seem particularly optimistic, either – at least, not in the near term. Oh, and in case you were worried: you’re not getting your money back. Not yet, anyway.

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It’s looked a little touch and go as to whether Neal Stephenson’s crowd-sourced swordfighting game Clang was going to make it. But it has, which means there’s one more game added to the list of titles which we hope and pray can ultimately prove those whole Kickstarter thing is a valid model for independent development. At the time of writing, Clang has $520,000 of an intended $500,000, and $90,000 of that was nine people opting for the $10k tier that gets them a replica weapon and a dev visit. A few hours are left go on the kick-clock, in case you’ve been dithering about how much you want stuff.

So, well done Mr Stephenson and crew. You can now make digital swordfighting dreams real. As long as you have a Razer Hydra motion controller, anyway.
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