Hey everyone,
We’re bringing some heavy news today.
Die For the Lich is in a development hiatus...
tl;dr
Development of Die For The Lich has spun out into something much larger than we had originally accounted for. The time and money we've put into the game has been a strain financially, as well as personally. It feels like the 2 of us haven't had a non-development related conversation in 18 months, which is difficult for 2 brothers who rarely get to see each other in person. We need time to rest, reconnect and to evaluate what comes next. We are incredibly sorry to put our fans in this position, and cannot thank you enough for your support. Hopefully you can empathize with our need to recharge, and that you will still be here when we are ready to return to development!
We’ve loved working on this game, but after a year and a half of development, it has finally taken a toll. Working on this game for this long was never the plan which is often the case in game development, but that’s not an excuse. We hoped to release around this time, but with how much work is still left, it’s simply not possible.
When we first started working on this game, we were just happy to collaborate and make a small dice-rolling game about fighting undead creatures. As development continued, the game grew, and eventually we secured funding to bring it to Early Access, which was a huge milestone for us.
As the scope expanded, so did the goals and expectations, but our mindset remained the same: it was still the small dice-rolling game to us. In the long run, that mismatch hurt us. In hindsight, we should have kept development shorter and treated the project as a learning experience in project and expectation management, rather than trying to turn it into a complex, highly balanced game.
We had hoped that Early Access would bring in enough support to carry the game forward, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. We invested a significant amount of time, our own money, and even brought in a publisher to give the project the best chance possible. But in the end, we just couldn’t make the financial side of things work.
At a certain point, we had to be honest with ourselves, Die for the Lich is not a self sustaining project. While we found an amazing niche community along the way, the game didn’t reach a wider audience in a way that would allow us to continue development without worrying about how to pay bills next quarter.
We’re incredibly happy that people enjoyed the game and still play it daily to earn that crown on Discord. Seeing people share ideas and contribute to development has been the highlight of this entire journey, and we truly cannot thank you enough for that.
With all that said, we will be moving on to new projects for now - likely working apart with new collaborators in the near future. And of course, our goal is still to finish DFTL in the future. We don’t know when or how yet, but we do intend to complete it one way or another. It would be very awkward meeting Charon if we didn’t finish it first.
We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who supported us, played the game, shared feedback, or simply followed along. It truly means a lot for a strange game like DFTL that never quite fit into a box.
Thank you for being part of this journey with us and hope you understand ❤️
Keep on rolling!