The developers of Sam Suede in Undercover Exposure have thrown in the towel.
Sam Suede’s bumpy ride on Kickstarter has come to an unfortunate but probably inevitable end, as the team at Wisecrack Games has pulled the plug on the project. Announced back in May, it very quickly ran into grief over suggestions that Al Lowe, who did some preliminary work on the game several years ago before joining with Replay Games for the Leisure Suit Larry reboot, was still actively involved. Legal threats and allegations of shenanigans bounced back and forth, and Wisecrack eventually removed most of the references to Lowe, although he remained a central component of one of the top reward tiers.
But while the Leisure Suit Larry Kickstarter blew past its goal with ease, Sam Suede never really caught fire. A month after it launched, it hadn’t even achieved $15,000 in pledges, a little more than three percent of its $500,000 goal, and last night Wisecrack honcho Ken Wegrzyn decided he’d seen enough.
“After much deliberation, we have decided to take a step back, regroup and brainstorm as to the best approach to re-launching this project,” he wrote in the latest Kickstarter update. “Within an hour of the Kickstarter launch, erroneous and misleading information was posted and declared to the media about Wisecrack Games, attempting to derail any progress of this Kickstarter campaign. It was the leg work and research of the gaming community that revealed the foul play. Eventually, the truth prevailed, albeit too late.”
Wegrzyn expressed confidence that the game would eventually be finished and released, saying the team has the experience, creative talent, motivation and resources (minus the money) to get the job done. “We now only need funding and support to make this a reality!” he added.
Fans who want to keep an eye on Sam Suede in Undercover Exposure as it moves into its post-Kickstarter period may do so at wisecrackgames.com.
