Japanese YouTuber and game developer The Lore Knight Narunii (hereafter Narunii) has revealed that his upcoming crowdfunded game The Oath’s Abyss (誓いノ淵, unofficial translation) which raised over 50.8 million yen (about $319.6k USD) has been facing serious trouble during development, with the risk of the whole project going down the drain. According to Narunii’s recent YouTube video, the game’s director/programmer has quit due to internal disagreements, and the remainder of the production team is currently unable to continue developing the project.
The Oath’s Abyss started out as Narunii’s wish to “make a title that would leave its mark on video game history,” reaching its crowdfunding goal of about $192k USD in only four days after the campaign started back in February 2023. Ultimately, the game managed to reach 169% of the original goal, raising almost $320k USD with the support of over 3,800 backers.
The game is a 2D dark fantasy-styled hack-and-slash RPG with building elements. Players are tasked with building structures and farms while also defending their base from waves of enemies. The “final goal” of The Oath’s Abyss is to build “the ultimate paradise.” Its development team also features renowned industry sound producers and composers such as TECHNOuchi (sound producer for Dark Souls, Demon’s Souls), Motoi Sakuraba (Dark Souls, Tales series composer) and even Emi Evans who performed songs for Dark Souls and the NieR series.
But despite the great kickstart it had, in May 2024, it was announced that the game would not be completed by the originally planned June deadline. Since then, there haven’t been any significant updates regarding the game until December 31, 2025, when it was announced that Goburo, the game’s director and programmer had been personally dismissed from the position by Narunii, leaving the game without its key developer.
Narunii, who serves as the game’s creator and scenario writer, explains that the disagreements came from his own “detailed interrogating,” causing Narunii to be effectively banned from participating in any aspects of development other than scenario writing. However, Narunii states that in such situation, he was unable confirm his game’s production status and level of completion over a long period of time. The distrust among team members eventually led to Goburo’s dismissal. Currently, Narunii has about 10GB of development data that was passed on from Goburo, however, he does not have the means to open the Unity project. While he was told that the game was around 60% done, he is still unable to verify its degree of completion.
Since the game’s development likely won’t be making any progress without a director/professional who can access the files, Narunii decided to look for collaborators via YouTube. In order to hopefully catch the eye of other creators and get them interested in the project, Narunii’s development update video doubles as a lengthy, detailed explanation of the story and lore of the game.
According to the YouTuber, there is currently about 10 million yen (approximately $64k USD) left in the budget raised via crowdfunding. However, since development is essentially in a “limbo” with no ways of figuring out the game’s completion status, it is still unknown whether the budget will be sufficient to cover production costs once new staff comes on board. Due to the game being repeatedly delayed, Narunii says he is considering to return the money to his backers, while also planning to look for “a wealthy patron” that would help him cover the cost of the game.
Apparently, Narunii has already received several inquiries regarding the director/developer/advisor vacancies, and according to his recent X posts, he’s already commissioned two individuals to analyze the Unity files. Narunii says that the game only appears to be around 20% done, suggesting that recreating the game from scratch would be the most realistic option at the moment. While this sounds like a rather unfortunate outcome after almost four years of development, it will be interesting to see whether Narunii will be able to complete the long-anticipated passion project once he gets new team members on board.
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If i were them I would try to get a chapter or two done and put it in Early Access on Steam to try and raise funds. But only if they can finish it.