John Romero puts Blackroom Kickstarter on hold to finish gameplay demo

Just a few days ago John Romero, the iconic game designer best known for his work on Doom and Quake, launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new, classic-style first-person shooter called Blackroom. Today, that campaign has been cancelled.

In a backer-only message, Romero revealed that the campaign — which was looking to raise $700,000 to fund development — is being put on hold so that studio Night Work Games can create a gameplay demo. Romero says that while the campaign created a lot of interest, that didn’t translate into a lot of backers, and he believes the lack of a gameplay demo is the reason. When the initial campaign launched, details on the game were relatively slim; there was no trailer or screenshots, for instance, only a few pieces of concept art. Prior to being cancelled, the Blackroom Kickstarter raised more than $130,000 from just over 2,200 backers.

“We’re not in a massive rush to hurry up, get all the money, and start making the game — we want to do it right,” he tells Develop. “So we’ll stop the fundraising for now, finish the demo we’re working on, and then do it again. If they don’t like that, then we don’t make that game — but we think they will like it.”

The demo is expected to take around two months to build, after which the plan is to relaunch the crowdfunding campaign. Blackroom was originally planned for a launch in 2018, if funded.