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 campaign, Soulbound Studios 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 involved several iterations and milestones declared complete, 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. The game was delayed from a tentative December 2019 date; a virtual land auction event called Settlers of Elyria launched on March 12, 2020. On March 20, 2020, Soulbound Studios released a pre-alpha gray box demo showing parkour mechanics. Four days later, the studio announced its closure, complete staff layoffs, and an indefinite hiatus of the project. On April 9, Walsh released a statement claiming his announcement was misinterpreted and that he would pursue continuing the project by having former staff work pro bono while he sought new funding. On June 26, Walsh posted that user transaction logs were available (later disabled when the site was locked) and 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 Walsh explained the game's state and future. The video claimed an independent auditor verified that backer revenue was properly spent on game development, that much content was not ready for public consumption but backend features had progressed, and that the game continued active development.