Akaneiro "100% finished", Spicy Horse "not out of money"

Akaneiro is finished and free-to-play, so Spicy Horse founder American McGee has had to explain why he wants you to give him some money.

The Akaneiro Kickstarter has been updated to remove a reference to Spicy Horse being "out of time and money" to finish the game, with McGee contacting Kotaku to dispute the suggestion that the developer is in financial trouble or that the game is incomplete as it stands.

"The game is 100% finished. The company is not out of money. The project was completed on time, on budget and will be shipped this month. It has been in closed beta with 25k people having run through it since late last year," he said.

"When the Akaneiro team says they are 'out of money/time' it just means they came to the natural end of their development cycle on that project."

McGee said that at this point in a traditional publishing model deal, Spicy Horse would ask for extend development time, to add in extra features, repeating the Kickstarter message that in its current state Spicy Horse can't "call the game complete".

"We're not satisfied. We'd like to take the game further and make it better. In the days when we were funded by a publisher, we would have asked them to review our ideas for additional features and approve (or not) a longer development cycle. 99% of the time they would have said no," he said.

"As we are not publisher funded, and because we can't afford to continue development indefinitely, we're asking the audience – we're giving them a chance to decide whether or not these additional features sound worthwhile."

McGee said Akaneiro will launch this month regardless of the Kickstarter's success or failure, and will be in a "final" state as determined by Spicy Horse's schedule and budget. Spicy Horse will continue to support and refine the game, but without the extra cash, won't be developing major new features which it added to its wishlist during development.