Brathwaite's Old-School RPG Kickstarter terminated ahead of time

The Kickstarter for Shaker: An Old-School RPG - a game by Brenda Brathwaite, Tom Hall and developer Loot Drop (John Romero's studio) - has been terminated ahead of time.

The project earned a quarter of its $1 million goal and had two weeks left to run.

"In the industry, games are pitched every day. Some make it to the next stage, but many don't. We regret to announce that we're adding Shaker: An Old-School RPG to the latter list," an update read.

"Ultimately, our pitch just wasn't strong enough to get the traction we felt it needed to thrive. Sure, it may have made it. We could have fought our way to a possibly successful end. In reading your feedback and talking it over internally, however, we decided that it made more sense to kill it and come back with something stronger.

"... it made more sense to kill it and come back with something stronger."

"In game design, mercy killing is the law."

Shaker: An Old-School RPG had a lot going for it. Brenda Brathwaite and Tom Hall have highly decorated video game pasts, and Loot Drop - the studio founded by Brathwaite and Romero - was ready to make the game.

The game's premise was science fiction and fantasy. It's a complex set up, but basically it boils down to a time travel company - Shaker - deploying agents from their world to a medieval world, via a bridge world, to set right events from a millennia ago. The game mechanics outlined in a few update posts stayed true to the "Old-School RPG" part of the title: turn-based, party-based, etc..

Nostalgic RPG experiences have found success on Kickstarter. Wasteland 2 roared into life and, more recently, Obsidian's Project Eternity became the highest earning video game project on Kickstarter ever.

Exactly what Brathwaite, Hall and Loot Drop intend to come back with remains to be seen. Will it be Shaker: An Old-School RPG rethought? Or will it be something entirely different?