*UPDATE*
They have now NUKED the game's discord server, so there will be less traces of the disaster this game ended up being
No words on closure, no communication what so ever!
Clearly this was a pump & dump by CEO Maximiliam
SHAME!
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Sadly this game has been abandoned by the Director creator & CEO - Maximiliam Rehbein - It had potentional, but it was way to ambitious.
It wanted to be a Pirate game
It wanted to be a medieval game
It wanted to be a Survival game
It wanted to be a game with all of the things above mixed inn with Magic???
They only (yeah ONLY) collected 38,746$ USD from Both Kickstarter & Indiegogo (Kickstarter asked 35,000$ - they got somewhere around 37,400 - NOT AN ACCURATE NUMBER)
It is run by a indie game developer company, which has a lot of different black holes around it, and tunnels leading to no where.
There's 2 companies u need to know of, Arcadius Entertainment & Millenium games - They are both owned & started by Maximiliam Rehbein (CEO & Creative Director) - Millenium games at first, started witha Block-chain Crypto game, in February 2023, but closed down the game & started on Kingdoms of Ereloth V1, this also started on kickstarter, they asked 26,5k$ but failed.
They than attempted a second time, and this time they had more to show on their kickstarter page
Link below is THIS game's kickstarter (Succeeded)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kingdomsofereloth/kingdoms-of-ereloth-rpg-survival-videogame
Below is the PREVIOUS Kickstarter (Failed)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/626397145/kingdoms-of-ereloth-mmorpg-medieval-life-simulator-0/description
I've been trying to be a devils advocate for this game & their team for the longest time, and it's finally time for me to unleash my un-biased opinion of this game, so grab a coffee, and enjoy.
September 27th, the date the game was OFFICIALLY meant to be released.
The game failed to launch on it's official date of release, due to "A critical programming glitch has had a significant impact on the game map, despite undergoing rigorous testing."
What does this mean?
Who knows, i'm not going to sit here and claim i am a technical individual, but the overall translation goes along the lines of "Sorry, we don't have a game to actually release, so we are going to delay the game by another 5 days, to give us more time to add more "stuff" into the broken game"
Meanwhile offering a "Never before seen" showcase of what THEY got "Coming soon TM" and "This will be in the early access!" Below i will link these showcases, one is in english, other one is in Spanish.
English version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sixylGX32jY&ab_channel=Epixito
Spanish Version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGjUP6T55To&t=3646s&ab_channel=Epixito
What they essentionally showed the potentional player base & buyers was "We... got STUFF! - YEAH! - Stuff... Uhm, look more stuff, that is not coming yet, will be soon soon i promise - SHIPS that will never be in the game" - And rest is history.
Where did it all go wrong?
Their overall ambition of the game, were way beyond their 38,746$ USD capacity, if u want to make a indie video game, around 3 - 4 of the most difficult gaming topics of all time (I also forgot to mention, they said early on this game WAS a "MMORPGPirateMedievalSurvival Game!" - Man what a mouthful, anywas i digress - Going into these genres is incredibly time consuming as well as money consuming, and trying to achieve THIS type of game, with 100 developers (Yes they said it was 100) and barely 40,000$ USD - When we have seen, projects like Elyria emassing almost 5 million$ USD and STILL failed - These guys believed THEY had the answer, THEY had the experience! - But when u dove deeper into their backgrounds on linkedIN, they had no previous experience in any form of making a MMORPG let alone a video game at all!
The shady business.
Myself and a team of 5 other individuals i won't name here, went on a deep dive research on their team, max (CEO & CD) and man did we find a lot of shady business practices! - First off, their developers were ALL INTERNS from College in Chile! Not ONE developer (That we could find) were an actual pro developer - Not even Maximiliam (CEO) had ANY previous experience (What the F***!?) They also had a contract, where the internship developers would NOT get paid fully, until the game started generating revenue for the company - At the start, they would recieve 150$ USD every month (Apparently this is a normal practice in chile? - i'm no lawyer, but this doesn't sound right) - If they signed on further, for full employment, they woul recieve 1150$ USD every month.
So myself & the team of 5 that i was working with, reached out to several of their developers and more stuff came to revelation, several of the internship developers, were ever payed, some got payed in the beginning but than their payment stopped and no actual clarification was given, other than a cold shoulder.
Release day.
The game was delayed for well over a month, and on the October 18th, it was finally released!
Wait a minute! ~ THIS WAS NOT WHAT THEY PROMISED -
https://www.twitch.tv/freshlymantv/clip/SpoopyFunnyPenguinOptimizePrime-SaMb8qOICKPy3Jc5
https://www.twitch.tv/freshlymantv/clip/BumblingObservantDadNotATK-wSlSis12XlC_ztLc
*Facepalm* I have no words. - They overpromised so much, showed us "Everything" and yet, their launch was WORSE than ATLAS - That is not an understatement, we've beat a game that had the HISTORY'S WORST Launch in gaming history!? Unreal!
This is BY FAR the WORST launched Early Access & game on steam in DECADES to comes.
I was fortunate to receive a free key, and did my outmost BEST to maintain my composure and not trash talk this game to much, but now that the company is going under & is working on paying their ex-employess (adherence to their contracts) the game is dead, not a single developer is working on it anymore, they've all quit/laid off to salvage money & paying everyone.
So how did it come to this?
Over-ambitious with a little to no experienced team, the vision of the game was lost way before the release (Kinda reminds you of DreamWorld when that sh*t show launched) No fundings to back said ambition & using interns over professionals (Nothing against interns!)
Hope this review was readable - English is my second language, so, sorry for any typos!
