If you've been visiting the site over the last few months, you might have heard of Sovietborgs, a new homebrew title in development from Retro Sumus, the small studio behind the 2021 Dreamcast game Xenocider.
Featuring an over-the-top Soviet-themed aesthetic and a top-down run 'n' gun-style game in the style of The Bitmap Brothers' The Chaos Engine, it is currently being crowdfunded on Indiegogo, with versions planned for the Sega Dreamcast, Sega Mega Drive / Genesis, MS-DOS, and Neo Geo.
However, with just 7 days left to go before the funding period ends, it appears the campaign hasn't exactly gone as well as its creators were expecting, having raised just €30,099 of its €48,000 goal (as of the time of writing). As a result, some of its backers are starting to wonder what might happen if the campaign doesn't manage to hit its goal in time, questioning whether the game will still get a release in some form or another, should it fail to raise the additional fund in time.
Reaching out to the developer Retro Sumus via email, a spokesperson for the studio told us "We are well aware that it is hardly possible at this point, but we’d rather at least wait and see how far we can get."
As for a backup plan, it appears the developer doesn't have any concrete plans in place, should the IndieGoGo fail to hit its target, suggesting they will simply issue refunds and will have to find another source of funding, potentially from a publisher or from a revised campaign further down the line.
The spokesperson said, "I think it’s important that potential backers understand that this has been a 2 (sometimes 3) people effort even during the development of our previous game, Xenocider for Dreamcast, which launched early 2021."
"We don’t really have a budget or a publisher behind us. We did it all by ourselves, sometimes by hand, quite literally. A backup plan could be finding a publisher that believes in the project and is willing to at least partially fund the rest of the development. Or simply wait for a few months, reconsider things, and come back (or not) with a different strategy."
If you want to give the campaign a lift, you can back the project here. According to the devs, "Neo Geo users can expect more colourful sprites, smoother animations and some nice scaling effects in particularly dramatic areas or moments". As for Dreamcast players, they can expect two versions of the soundtrack (chiptune and full audio CD), Twin Stick support, and "other surprises".
Here's some footage of the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis demo of the game: