Once upon a time, there was a promise of a spiritual successor to a beloved classic game, and fans gave over $4 million to make it a reality. We all know the story, and its unfortunate ending, but what if the result had been everything it could have been?

As lifelong, passionate Mega Man fans, we pursued that thought and decided to create Prism Queen, a 2.5D action platformer aiming to deliver a faithful but modernized evolution of the classic Mega Man experience—and with an intended crowdfunding goal of less than 1/100th of what that other game made.

Then late last year, Capcom shocked the world with the sudden announcement of Mega Man 11, a 2.5D modernized evolution of the classic Mega Man experience. As fans, we were delighted, but as game developers who had just poured 11 months of work into Prism Queen, it was certainly a blow. When you're making a spiritual successor to a game that no longer needs a spiritual successor, you naturally have to question whether you've wasted your time and should move on to something else.

After due consideration, we decided not to move on, but move forward. Prism Queen may have been designed to appeal to an existing fanbase, but it's not a generic copy filled with blatant clones like a hero and sidekick named Up & Atom who belong to Dr. Bright. We have a lot of fun and fresh ideas to bring to the table, we love our characters, and we still want to tell their stories.

Knowing some rethinking would probably be necessary later on, we set a short-term goal to polish up what we'd already done and add some new content by the time the project hit the one year mark. This newly released trailer is a showcase of our present progress.

Now we've reached a crossroads. Where does Prism Queen go from here? Ideally, we would love to maintain course and go head-to-head with Mega Man himself. Unfortunately, when a similar and beloved title already exists from a major publisher, the chances of raising essential development funds for Prism Queen on Kickstarter begin to look bleak. And so we are considering changes that will set our game apart on a more fundamental level. What kind of changes and how drastic are yet to be determined.

It feels like we've come a very long way on this project, but things have still felt rudimentary enough that we're only now announcing it in a widespread manner. Feedback is crucial to any indie endeavor, and with the present considerations it's more important to us than ever. We need to hear from as many gamers as possible, hardcore Mega Man fans and the uninitiated alike, so that we can consider all the angles while we take a step back to reexamine the future of Prism Queen.

Please check out the trailer and give us your thoughts here or on any of our social networks! Please share with anyone who might be interested!