Former Lionhead Developers Start Fable Card Game Crowdfunding
Former Lionhead Studios employees have set up a new indie studio to complete the digital card game Fable Fortune that Lionhead once started. To raise money, the new Flaming Fowl Studios will start a crowdfunding campaign on Tuesday
Development of the card game started eighteen months before Lionhead Studios closed its doors. The new studio was founded by former Lionhead collaborators Craig Oman, Mike West and Marcus Lynn. Flaming Fowl Studios has been granted the right to use the Fable license by Microsoft, but the team must turn to crowdfunding without a publisher, IGN reports. The game falls into the category of online card games like Hearthstone.
In order to release the game, the studio hopes to raise at least £250,000 within four weeks with some undisclosed stretch goals if more is raised. When the promotion ends, a closed beta period will start a few weeks later. An open beta for Xbox and PC is expected in October with a full version of the game in early 2017.
IGN’s interview shows that the game builds on ‘familiar elements from Fable’. For example, it is possible to make certain choices in the middle of a match, such as choosing a good or bad character. After such an action, all cards in the possession of the player also change.
Screenshot from ‘practice game’ IGN with Flaming Fowl Studios
Still, that’s just the beginning and the game’s design is still ‘far from complete’. It is therefore the studio’s aim to build the game together with the fans and then ‘possibly adjust parts in the future’, but the studio wants to discuss this with the players.
Eight years ago the idea arose to release the game as part of Fable 2. Development finally started about six years later in 2014. An interesting detail is that it may have been one of the reasons that Microsoft did not want to sell Lionhead Studios to buyers who did not want to waive the Fable license.
There were rumors Kotaku had heard of that, despite buyers “queuing up” to take over the studio, Microsoft didn’t want to lose Fable’s intellectual property with the sale of the studio. According to Kotaku’s source, that would have deterred the majority of potential buyers. It remains conjecture, but perhaps the upcoming release of Fable Fortune was one of the reasons that Microsoft wanted to keep the Fable license.
The page on Kickstarter will be online on Tuesday.