The studio behind 2019’s Gloomhaven, Flaming Fowl, announced its new game today. It’s a deckbuilding strategy game called Ironmarked but while it has a Steam demo out, the studio has already delayed the full release indefinitely.
In a statement to VGC, CEO Craig Oman said that Flaming Fowl had been working on Ironmarked for over a year before its publisher unexpectedly dropped it last summer. The studio has been self-funding Ironmarked since August, and now had to stop production and lay off more than half of its developers.
Unfortunately, Oman explained that he’s been pitching the game to various publishers since then, but hasn’t been able to secure any deal. He points out that the most likely reason is that Ironmarked is a mid-tier title, as he was asking for around $6 million USD. However, publishers were only looking to sign games that cost a couple hundred grand or around the high end at $20 to $40 million.
“As soon as we finished Gloomhaven, we signed Ironmarked,” he explained. “We had multiple offers. But then a year and half later, we’ve gone back to a lot of the same publishers and they say they’re no longer looking for projects like this.”
Oman encouraged those who enjoyed the demo to wishlist Ironmarked on Steam so that Flaming Fowl can take the numbers and present it to publishers in the future.
Some studios have been forced to either lay off employees or shut down entirely due to financial issues. Despite being one of Steam’s most-wishlisted games, the studio behind The Day Before recently shut down as the game failed financially and had poor reviews.
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