Death Inc. Status? Dead as a Doornail.

We can officially bid a sad farewell to Ambient Studios, the development team behind the much-anticipated Kickstarter darling Death Inc. The underworld strategy game failed to reach its funding level on Kickstarter, but maintained enthusiastic backer support, and was scheduled to release an alpha to early backers in the months to come. Unfortunately, in an announcement made today on their website, Ambient Studios explained that issues still arose from a simple lack of funding.

We’re super proud of what we achieved, but ultimately we didn’t manage to make enough money to keep the wolves from the door. And so we had to make the difficult decision that it is no longer feasible for Ambient to continue operating.

Just last week, the project seemed to be chugging along nicely, with regular updates coming via Ambient Studios’ blog. The news is sudden, but not entirely surprising given Death Inc.’s inability to gain funding even during the early stages of development. If you’re a concerned alpha backer, Ambient promises to refund any money you’ve contributed to development. 

Thank you so much for all your support and encouragement along the way, we’ve got no regrets and have loved every minute of it. Obviously we cannot deliver on the commitments we made in the various Death Inc. alpha tiers. If you’re one of the alpha backers, don’t worry – we will be issuing full refunds so you will not be in any way out of pocket.

It’s a sad, sad day in the indie gaming world. Ambient Studios had heaps of promise, and it’s unclear what individual team members will be doing after Ambient closes its doors. If you’re a fan of indie game-making, you can follow a couple of twitters (@jonnyhopper, @rovient)   to pay attention to what everyone’s going to be doing in the future.