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While we've been looking the other way, small Norwegian studio Red Thread Games has been having a rough time. It was to do with porting Dreamfall Chapters to new game engine Unity 5. All the early signs were encouraging and the logic was sound: Unity 5 is a more capable engine that will be supported for years. But the reality, to quote Red Thread leader Ragnar Tornquist, was like "a real-life survival RPG".What should have taken a couple of people a couple of months ended up taking a handful of people four months, all working overtime to try and keep Book Four - the fourth instalment in the episodic adventure series - on track for 21st October release date at the same time. But they couldn't manage it. So in addition to fraught staff, the Unity 5 saga cost 10-person Red Thread thousands and thousands of dollars, both in terms of production costs as well as missed revenue from Book Four. "All things considered, the final price tag is probably in excess of $150,000," wrote Tornquist. "That's a painful amount of money for a small - and cash-strapped - studio like ours."
Tornquist discussed specific engine problems in his post, but suffice to say they were such that, "On some days, it was hard to get out of bed and find the will to keep moving forward. But we did. We did."
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