Project Rap Rabbit, from the creators of PaRappa The Rapper and Gitaroo Man, didn’t meet its pledge goal at the end of its Kickstarter yesterday. As a result, the Kickstarter campaign has shut down.
“Your excitement for Project Rap Rabbit has been wonderful to behold, but today we must sadly accept that our crowd-funding journey must end here,” it said in the Project Rap Rabbit final Kickstarter campaign update. “We knew that sourcing funds for a high-quality rhythm-action game would be tough, and though we knew that Project Rap Rabbit would be an incredible game, unfortunately we weren’t able to do enough to prove that to the wider world.”
People pledged £162,057 out of £855,000 needed to fully fund the game, or close to 20 percent of its overall goal. Further development of the game will be stopped for now, although the developers still remain hopeful that they will be able to restart development.
“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,” it said in the Project Rap Rabbit final Kickstarter update. “As a result, work on Project Rap Rabbit cannot continue at this time.”
Project Rap Rabbit was to be created by iNiS J and NanaOn-Sha; both of the developers familiar with the rhythm game genre and published by PQube. iNiS J developed Gitaroo Man, Elite Beat Agents, The Black Eyed Peas Experience and most recently Just Sing while NanaOn-Sha was the creator of PaRappa The Rapper and its sequel PaRappa The Rapper 2. The developers recognize that the rhythm game genre isn’t as popular as it used to be (most of these games were released in the early 2000s), but still wanted to give Project Rap Rabbit a chance to shine.
The release for Project Rap Rabbit was slated to be in 2018, according to the Project Rap Rabbit Kickstarter FAQ.
“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,” it said in the Project Rap Rabbit final Kickstarter update. “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, it seems that not all hope is lost for Project Rap Rabbit, iNiS J and NanaOn-Sha. Meetings at E3 can indicate that they have already started searching for outside investors or maybe another publisher that would be willing to help out, although the Kickstarter update hasn’t specified this.
“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,” it said in the Project Rap Rabbit final Kickstarter update. “From all of us here at iNiS J and NanaOn-Sha, thank you again for your journeying with us. We sincerely hope this isn’t the last time you’ll hear of Project Rap Rabbit.”
It’s definitely hard to see any game fall on Kickstarter, especially one that has already raised so much money and had notable developers working on Project Rap Rabbit. Hopefully, the games 2,920 backers (and fans who didn’t/weren’t able to back Project Rap Rabbit) and the developing team will have a chance to see this game get the attention it should be getting.
The Kickstarter funding for Project Rap Rabbit officially closed on June 19. Future updates on Project Rap Rabbit can be found on its official website and Twitter account.
