With recent success stories like Yacht Club Games’ Shovel Knight, Keiji Inafune’s Mighty No. 9, and Playtonic Games’ Yooka-Laylee it’s easy to see why so many have come to use crowd funding as the premiere gateway to making dreams a reality. While some of these Kickstarters or Indiegogos fall by the wayside it is very rare for one to go so far south over the course of two years even after making goal. It is even rarer to see aforementioned project need five different crowd funds even after two of them had already made goal. It is even more unfathomable that people would continue donating money to the process after those requesting the money have admitted to mismanaging funds, producing a less than quality project, and personally attacking those who offer constructive criticism. However this brings us to the sideshow circus known as Ryhan Stevens’ Beast’s Fury.

Gameplay below

Beast’s Fury is a standard affair 2D fighting game whose gimmick is based around a full cast of anthropomorphic characters. The Beast’s Fury Campaign is trying to duplicate the success of another crowd funded fighter you may have heard of titled Skull Girls. Now this sad saga of money mismanagement, botched efforts, and lack of organization began approximately 2 years back. When the first Indiegogo for Beast’s Fury hit the scene, although the project didn’t make goal it didn’t stop them from making a second Indiegogo which they’ve since removed once it turned out to be yet another failure. Which lead creator and idea man Ryhan Stevens to go for the infamous hat trick and generate a third Indiegogo. With this campaign surprisingly rising to the occasion, receiving over $20K. The B.F. team remained vigilant and continued on with their efforts before running into more financial trouble down the line. There have been a few on record discussions where developers openly admit to their public that they’ve mismanaged the money. Fans began to share their discontent with this fact and began to to bring up these complaints to one EvilDog. EvilDog is the main programming lead and is the head of the technical aspects of the operation. These interactions can be seen here and on a larger scale here. We all know the cure to money mismanagement is to give them more money!


Yet that didn’t stop this team from again making yet another request for money Except this time their endeavor was to utilize the raised funds to pay the development and animation costs the game was expected to require. This money was not meant to generate a finished product, but something that would be presentable to investors and publishers in order to gain full funding. Unfortunately those on the B.F. Staff could not find that support and decided that it was time to fully rely on the fighting game community. Bet you can’t guess what the next move was? Yep that’s right, they made yet another request for funding, except this time they took to Kickstarter asking for twenty thousand dollars. As they say 4th time is the charm.


Keep Beast's Fury Going! Beast's Fury is a 2D Fighting Game in development for PC, Mac, & Linux. With your support, it will… Read more

Now with that bit of success they made yet another Kickstarter which still remains up. This one served the purpose of allowing their animators to work full time and decrease the current 9 month work load to a 2 to 3 month schedule as documented here. Since this new funding would allow them to work full time on their contributions to the game. This Kickstarter opened in May of 2014, made twice its goal, and the animations are still not done as we sit here in June of 2015. At this juncture you may be wondering to yourself “How bad can it get?” or “I’m sure it gets better”. Well you will be surprised to find out that it actually get worse.




Even with all these issues and setbacks plaguing the project a few notable names jumped on board in support. One would be Maximillian Dood the creator of the hit internet series entitled “Assist Me!”. The other would be Game Grumps’ own Arin Hanson, otherwise known as internet gaming sensation Egoraptor. Both would be having characters placed in the game, however both of their characters would sit as stretch goals for the project. This is important to note due to the fact that their roles are only to be placed in if the campaign is doing well. As we can see by the newest and current campaign, that is a far ways off. However they are already working on Maximillian’s character who goes by the name “Benny”. The game is nowhere near finished, the developers have admitted to mismanaging money and not understanding how to budget, they’ve said their own body of work is not up to par, and now they are working on stretch goals without the money in hand. Yet they are still continuing to ask you to throw money down this water well, that’s aboard a sinking ship, that’s falling off a cliff, into a pit that leads into a dark abyss of eternal limbo. (Benny’s Completion Announcement) Some of the stretch goals don’t even make sense. In one case a stretch goal is explicitly stated previously as a regular goal. So is it stretch or not?

Maximilian Dood The biggest fighting game channel on Youtube, created and produced by Maximilian. Commentaries,… Read more


Egoraptor I make CARTOONS! Are you a fan of CARTOONS?! Then watch my CARTOONS! MAIL ME STUFF! Egoraptor PO… Read more



Keep in mind that one of their donation rewards is a flat out sign of the poor budgeting. They previously admitted that $25K is not enough to fully animate and develop one character yet as you can clearly see this amount isn’t just going to get your character no matter how complex into the game. On top of a bit of that money would go to Indiegogo’s cut. Also not only that. With this reward tier you will also get the previous rewards as well. Which will all be delivered by December of 2016. I wonder if that’s still on the same time schedule as the “2 to 3 months animation”.

Ryhan Stevens has tried to break down where the money will be going and how they will allocate their funds. However when your animation budget equals your programming budget, there’s already a problem. Especially if Indiegogo’s cut plus rewards is costing more than QA testing, the music, and your network budget. 2 out of those 3 categories directly affect online play which is the cornerstone of which the fighting game genre thrives on in its current climate.


You are asking yourself a few questions. By now anyone would be curious to know the “who” is actually donating to this project. Who could support such a train wreck? How could they do it for so long? Even with setback after setback people still gave Ryhan Stevens and his team the benefit of the doubt that they could show enough resiliency, passion, and hard work to have this project ascend from the ashes like a phoenix. Yet time after time when supporters had any interaction with anyone on the game’s development staff or public relations team it usually ended on a sour note. Take the following threads as an example. The original Kickstarter thread and the current thread.

The reason I bring up the forums yet again is due to the fact one Mike Z came out to help the at the time and still stagnant Beast’s Fury. For those who do not know, Mike Z real name (Mike Zaimont) was the driving force developer behind Skull Girls as well as a highly regarded member of the Fighting Game Community and is considered a high level “pro” player. He has also worked on other titles such as Star Wars: Battlefront II. Now Mike’s experience is noted here because he offered not only to directly assist with Beast’s Fury by offering his talents but, also was apparently according to an interview done by Gamerheadlines.com in which there’s a specific segment where Ryhan Stevens says that Mike Z is a direct inspiration to him even wanting to bring Beast’s Fury to light. However when the very same Mike Z offer’s criticisms to the game’s stalled progress and dwindling development the staff (EvilDog) shuts him down. More and more posts like the one below continue to ensue on the Skullheart forums. Skullheart is the main source for all things Skull Girls Community related. Beast’s Fury thought by posting here it would gather like-minded people’s attention due to the similarities that Beast’s Fury does share with Skull Girls.



Now this trend of passive aggression and excuse making does trickle on to regular supporters as well. One in particular named Nicholas Day. His full story unedited from how he posted it can be found here for your convenience. The TL;DR version of his story consists of him pointing out flaws, being told to be quiet because talking about negatives can hurt the game’s image. Then being scolded for having an opinion. Then being told that saying that other people didn’t like the game was a bad thing. Then being told he was a bad person even after Nicholas himself donated over $30 to their project.

We haven’t even begun to talk about the fact that Adam Wan is tied to this project as seen credited here. The same Adam Wan that has been accused of being a bully and a rapist. So much concern has developed around wan this petition showed up not early last year to have him removed from being associated with the FurAffinity staff. Once Beast’s Fury’s team caught wind of this backlash his name has been dropped publicly from all newer kickstarters, but has NEVER been said to have been fired or kicked off the team. As if they’re trying to hide whether he’s still on the team or not. The only passing reference was EvilDog’s post that stated Adam Wan is no longer affiliated with the BF team. There has not been no official word on directly addressing this from one Ryhan Stevens. Which honestly would be par for the course due to the fact that the staff members changed between each crowd fund attempt.


Sign the Petition Remove Adam Wan from his position as development head. Read more

At the end of the day the current campaign does not look like it will make goal, nor does it look like the rewards will be fully followed through on. Not to mention that the current campaign is set to “Flexible” funding. In other words even if they do not make goal or even come close to it in any way, shape, form, or facet they will still be allowed to pocket the money. Under that circumstance they’d have no obligation to use that money toward the project if it is clearly no longer feasible. Recently Ryhan Stevens has also opened his own Patreon to also aid in funding this debacle. Just let this be a lesson to keep an eye out for projects like this and if things are not looking right keep your wallet tight. I’m sure there will be more developments that come through this meltdown. Stay tuned!