The developers behind Project Rap Rabbit have reflected on the game's future, following the sadly-expected demise of its Kickstarter campaign.

Project Rap Rabbit's crowdfunding campaign officially concluded at midnight UK time last night, although it had been clear for a while the game would not hit its goal.

In a new blog update posted shortly afterward, the game's development team offered a glimmer of hope that all may not be lost:

"We sadly are not in the position to be able to fund further production for a future crowd-funding relaunch involving a title deeper in development, and wouldn't want to scale back our vision. As a result, work on Project Rap Rabbit cannot continue at this time. "However, you don't make games such as PaRappa The Rapper, Gitaroo Man and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan without being optimistic in life. To paraphrase one our best-loved creations: 'We gotta believe!' "Though our Kickstarter campaign hasn't gone the way we'd intended, our early stages of development have left us more determined than ever to bring Project Rap Rabbit to life. While you didn't see Project Rap Rabbit at any conferences or booths during E3 week, we had a very, very busy E3 filled with meetings about our vision for the future of rhythm-action. "So what happens next? At this moment it's far too early to say, but thanks in part to your overwhelming support we know that our vision for Project Rap Rabbit hasn't gone unnoticed. "Though our Kickstarter campaign hasn't gone the way we'd intended, our early stages of development have left us more determined than ever to bring Project Rap Rabbit to life. While you didn't see Project Rap Rabbit at any conferences or booths during E3 week, we had a very, very busy E3 filled with meetings about our vision for the future of rhythm-action. "So what happens next? At this moment it's far too early to say, but thanks in part to your overwhelming support we know that our vision for Project Rap Rabbit hasn't gone unnoticed."

After a month-long campaign for £855k, the project managed just £162k in total.

This content is hosted on an external platform, which will only display it if you accept targeting cookies. Please enable cookies to view. Manage cookie settings

The game, designed to be a spiritual successor to cult rhythm classic Parappa the Rappa, suffered from a number of stumbles. First, its hugely ambitious initial stretch goals, placed on top of an already ambitious target. These were then recalibrated to make a much-requested Nintendo Switch version more attainable.

Then, the lack of actual gameplay - something remedied just 10 days ago, when prototype footage was released.

We'll give the final word to the game's developers: