Japanese YouTuber Narunii (The Lore Knight) has made a new update on the development progress of his Soulsborne-inspired dark fantasy game Chikai no Fuchi (Oath’s Abyss), revealing a new self-made mockup prototype (Source: Game*Spark). Despite the project having a largely successful crowdfunding campaign raising over 320k $USD, numerous troubles along the way left it stuck in development limbo, followed by waves of backlash from backers. After a long hiatus, Narunii decided to restart the project from scratch, and last month, he announced that the development was finally back on track.
While the prototype itself is rather simple, Narunii assures his fans that the finished product will be made by professional programmers. As the YouTuber suggests in his post, the mockup was likely made for learning purposes. Given that Narunii had no technical experience in creating games, and was only involved in the concept and scenario writing back when Chikai no Fuchi entered the development phase for the first time, it seems like the self-produced mockups will be a way for him to be more directly involved with the creation of the game itself.
To provide some background, the Chikai no Fuchi crowdfunding project launched back in 2023, hitting its initial goal of about $192k USD in just 4 days, and ultimately raising a whopping $320k. However, after failing to release in its initial release window in 2024, Chikai no Fuchi was postponed indefinitely. In December 2025, the project’s director and main programmer was dismissed from the team due to internal turmoil, leaving Narunii with 10 GB of development data which he had no means of accessing.
After commissioning professional programmers to tackle the Unity files, Narunii found out that the development of Chikai no Fuchi had barely progressed, leading himto decide to start everything from scratch and hire new team members. Furthermore, the YouTuber revealed that completing the project would require 10x the current budget, as much of the crowdfunded assets had already been spent on the project’s dragged out development throughout the past few years.
Narunii also expressed interest in signing up for the Japanese government’s IP360 content industry support initiative, which is meant to provide funding for the creation of new IPs, including indie games. Developers are eligible for grants of up to around $62,000 USD, and while it is not sure whether this amount will be enough to cover the full scope of the project, the YouTuber recently announced that he’s been making preparations to apply.
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