Recently, Matt Philips, Designer and Programmer for Tanglewood, posted to Tanglewood's Kickstarter page with a progress update. Along with announcing that all Mega Drive copies of the game had now been shipped, there was also the unfortunate revelation that the Dreamcast port for the game was being put on hiatus. If you were one of the ones who ordered the Dreamcast port of Tanglewood and do not want to wait until the port gets back on track Philips stated that you would be entitled to switching your order to either the Mega Drive copy or receiving a full refund.
Philips goes on to detail the reasons for the hiatus for the Dreamcast port in the update post. It seems that the delays that the Mega Drive version of Tanglewood ran into used up the reserve funds that the team had in place to use specifically for the Dreamcast port, Philips says:
the running costs of the studio, the contractor costs for reworking assets, storage costs for cartridge parts ordered in advance, the costs of moving release schedules (logistics, marketing), plus many unexpected costs we hadn't factored into the original budget (our contingency fund wasn't even close)...In order to keep the studio alive, Philips says that he's needed to take on a lot of contract work. That contract work has then required the majority of his time, preventing him from being able to appropriately dedicate time to continuing work on the Dreamcast port itself. Lastly, Philips expresses that he has been left burned out by the development of Tanglewood. The six-year long project was something that Philips says he put 100% of himself into every day and that at this point he needs to take a break from Tanglewood.
Philips is very clear in the update post that he very much means that the Dreamcast port of Tanglewood is on hiatus and not canceled. He states that he is fully determined to see it through one he manages to gather funds and staff for the project, and that he will provide further updates as any developments come up.
Do you think the project will ever come back from hiatus and finish out with the Dreamcast port?
