Red Ash failed to reach it's kickstarter goal.

The anime-inspired project, fully titled Red Ash: The Indeniable Legend, was conceived by former Capcom employee Keiji Inafune. It was unable to hit its $800,000 goal, falling short by $280,000 after a month long campaign.

However, that is not the end for Red Ash. On July 29th, it was announced that Red Ash is going to be made regardless if the kickstarter is successful or not. The announcement by Inafune noted that Fuze entertainment, a Chinese digital entertainment company, is fitting the bill for the development of the base Red Ash game.

The two big items from this partnership with Fuze are simple; Red Ash's main campaign and initial game content will be developed, titled The KalKanon Incident and a port of the game will be made for both the Playstation 4 and Xbox One. Inafune's new studio, Comcept, will retain the rights to Red Ash and have creative oversight regarding the games future development.

It took over 24 hours for Comcept to release what their new plan for their kickstarter was, in that time several backers pulled their funding from the project. When it was finally updated, the kickstarter was re-tooled just last week to contribute to the games stretch goals, rather than the games development.

Originally, The KalKanon Incident was going to be episodic and serve as a prequel to Red Ash, with the kickstarters goals reflected in this. The deal with Fuze has changed the focus of the kickstarter to crowdfund extras to the game if the $800,000 goal was reached.

These offerings included a challenge dungeon, a new playable character, and "village reconstruction", which would have been a rebuilding of the games main village after The KalKanon Incident is complete. None of these goals have been achieved. What was achieved includes a Red Ash anime project, which was a separate kickstarter.

It should be noted that the agreement with Fuze is not that unusual regarding crowdfunding game projects, which often seek investments outside of crowdfunding to secure production of their product. What is unusual is how the Fuze deal guaranteed the project will be a success, leading to a total revamp of the goals of the kickstarter itself, as well as the announcement of the Fuze deal during the kickstarter.

Comcept and Inafune had success on kickstarter in the past with Mighty No. 9, which was touted as the "spiritual successor" to the Mega Man franchise. The development of Mighty No. 9 is still ongoing, and has not yet been released.

[caption id="attachment_50284" align="aligncenter" width="660"] Concept art of the main protagonist, by Comcept.[/caption]

During the Red Ash campaign, there was some confusion regarding which platforms the game would be released on. Originally the title was PC only, before Comcept announced stretch goals for an Xbox One and Playsation 4 release. Some backers have also complained about the constant moving and mystery of the campaigns stretch goals, and were addressing concerns over the development of Mighty No. 9.

The Red Ash team also included several veterans from the Mega Man Legends team, which lead to many fans to incorrectly presume the game would be a spiritual successor to the Legends series. Inafune has stated several times that Red Ash was a pet project of his, however, and not related to Mega Man in any fashion, despite some continuously mentioning Mega Man Legends as an inspiration to the game, such as Jim Sterling.

Regardless, Red Ash will be developed, and will be coming to the PC, PS4 and Xbox One in the future, despite the kickstarter failure.

Is the silver lining of Red Ash's release a good thing, or are you worried about the future of the game? Leave your comments below.