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The long-troubled Kickstarter game, Unsung Story, was supposed to be the next big game from the mind of Yasumi Matsuno (of Final Fantasy Tactics fame). Instead developer Playdek failed to produce a functioning game and decided to abandon ship. Now, Little Orbit is taking over the project. Until recently Little Orbit was best known for producing licensed retail games, but in a statement to USgamer, the company's CEO explains why the studio has decided to salvage Unsung Story, as well as reveal further problems the game suffered under Playdek.

In an email to USgamer, Matt Scott from Little Orbit explained that despite the success the studio had with licensed games, Little Orbit has been trying to transition into indie digital development/publishing. However at the time, the studio didn't have a catalog suitable for the transition. Then came Unsung Story.

Unsung Story development doc

"I discovered Unsung during a meeting with Playdek about a completely different topic. The more I looked into it, the more I liked it," said Scott citing the story and RPG designs which were all created by Matsuno. "Like thousands of backers who spent their money on it, I love the game that Unsung Story wants to be. So ultimately we decided to take it over."

Scott tells USgamer that Little Orbit plans on delivering the game, but there are some big questions lingering over the project. Is Matsuno still involved? What about the promised music from Hitoshi Sakimoto? Little Orbit gave us some answers, but they just paint a more troubled picture of the project under Playdek.

Can Unsung Story be saved?

Regarding Matsuno's involvement, Scott tells me that he's not working with Little Orbit "at the moment."

"We have all of the materials that Matsuno did for Playdek before they separated ways. We are reaching out to him now to see if he can be involved more going forward, but since we can't guarantee his future involvement, we are taking his original work very seriously." To this end, Little Orbit will be retranslating everything from Japanese to make sure the game design and narrative ideas are as accurate as possible, but that does call into question how much Little Orbit trusts the work done by Playdek in that regard.

As for Sakimoto's music, which some backers suggest Playdek could release given how long ago the promised music must've been completed, Scott tells us that Little Orbit "[was] not given any music."

"I was told that a problem came up with the contract, and no music was ever created. However we are reaching out to Sakimoto to see if we can make that happen."

Scott wants to make it clear that the decision to take on Unsung Story didn't come lightly. "This has been incredibly frustrating for a lot of people, and there is a lot of toxicity in the project," which is accurate and makes me wonder why even take on such a loaded project in the first place.

"I knew going in that this would be a lot of work, but I also felt that it couldn't get any worse than it already was, so why not try."