Project Awakened temporarily put to sleep, backers given full refunds

Phosphor Games' Unreal Engine 3-powered action game Project Awakened hasn't had the best of luck. The indescribable game (and therein lies the problem, I think) fell short of its Kickstarter target back in March, and after a couple of months of trying to raise money by other means, their private funding campaign has now been put on hold . Thankfully, everyone who backed will be getting a full refund.

Phosphor Games haven't given up on their mod-friendly third-person thing-a-majig, but the need to start work on new, paying projects, coupled with a lack of contributors, caused the team to temporarily put Project Awakened out to pasture, as CEO Justin Corcoran explained to Polygon yesterday. If you liked the look of the game, however, there is some hope: Corcoran promised that "while we are a bit beat up, we are not defeated. Someday, somehow, we will make this game."

Here's a reminder of what could have been:

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.