Months After Finding Miracle Backer, Indie MMO TitanReach Is Once Again Ceasing Development

Last summer, we reported on indie MMO TitanReach having to cease development after running out of funding -- a crisis that was seemingly averted a short time later when the developer found a miraculous benefactor that offered to fully fund the game.

Lead developer Unravel said at the time that he would increase Square Root Studios' head count to 23 and raise pay while the game went back into "private development." YouTuber KiraTV scored an interview with the backer, whom he confirmed as legitimate sand said that he wanted to help a "hard-working, dedicated, and passionate" team that had "been trying to build something cool, but with very little resources at their disposal."

Fast forward to now and it looks like TitanReach is once again destined for the dustbin. MassivelyOP has learned from prospective players (via Reddit) that a message was posted to the game's Discord server by Unravel earlier today, stating that "Square Root Studios will be closing its doors for good. TitanReach will be laid to rest." He said that he and another developer, Fish, came up with the idea for the game while playing Rocket League, but as a "shy solo programmer turned game dev thrown into the deep end," he found himself dealing with more than he bargained for.

If you're sad to see the game go, maybe you won't be after learning that Unravel did have an extensive plan to incorporate NFTs into TitanReach -- but "not the existing garbage plaguing the crypto/NFT world," as he put it. None of it was required to play, he said, without acknowledging that if the game was built around it, then you'd still feel like a second-class citizen if you didn't. "This is much more than an art jpeg," he said after finishing his description of the system, which you can read all about in the Reddit thread, if your blood pressure isn't high enough for the day.

As for the mystery backer, Unravel said he's "not running off with the funding," and a few players have wondered if the backer was real in the first place. I'm inclined to think that he was, based on KiraTV's analysis, though you wouldn't blame him for backing out once he either learned about the NFT plans or simply got a closer look at far Square Root Studios was -- by Unravel's own acknowledgement -- in over its head. Or maybe some of the studio's employees felt that way, similarly to how Ubisoft's employees feel about its NFT push, and decided to jump ship and not leave enough bodies behind to continue development.