Chronicles of Elyria

Development

Chronicles of Elyria's Kickstarter campaign ran from May 3 to June 3, 2016, raising $1.36 million against a $900,000 goal. After the Kickstarter, the studio held multiple webstore special events, including the Settlers Of Elyria and Searing Plague events, and by October 2019 had raised over $7.7 million. Early development saw various iterations and milestones declared as completed, but the team needed to refactor mechanics of alpha versions such as VoxElyria and Prelyria. A major setback occurred when SpatialOS was dropped as the backend networking and game hosting software. After being delayed from a tentative December 2019 date, a virtual land auction event called Settlers of Elyria launched on March 12, 2020. On March 20, Soulbound Studios released a pre-alpha gray box demo showcasing parkour mechanics. Four days later, the studio announced its closure, complete staff layoffs, and an indefinite hiatus of the project. On April 9, the studio's founder released a new statement claiming the announcement was misinterpreted and that he would pursue continuing the project by having former staff work on a pro bono basis while he sought new funding. On June 26, a post on the official site announced that transaction logs of users were now available, though they were later disabled when the site was locked; the post also stated that new content would be posted in the coming weeks. On December 17, 2020, Soulbound Studios released a video titled Inside Chronicles of Elyria - Episode 1, in which the founder explained the current state and future of the company and game. The video claimed an independent auditor verified that revenue from backers was properly spent on game development, that much content developed over four years was not ready for public consumption but many back-end features had progressed, and that the game was continuing active development.