Neal Stephenson Kickstarter project officially dead

CLANG, the sword fighting title created by Neal Stephenson and funded through Kickstarter has been cancelled, according to an update from the author himself.

"A year has passed since the last update and I've decided that it's cleaner and simpler to cut the cord, and announce the termination of CLANG," he announced in an update on the game's Kickstarter page.

The title was successfully funded in July 2012, receiving $526,125 from 9,023 backers. In September last year the project was put on hold while the developers sought out more funding but according to Stephenson, that proved impossible.

"Additional fundraising efforts failed and forced the team to cut their losses and disband in search of steady work," explained the author.

"The prototype was technically innovative, but it wasn't very fun to play. This is for various reasons. Some of these were beyond our control. Others are my responsibility in that I probably focused too much on historical accuracy and not enough on making it sufficiently fun to attract additional investment."

He added that around two dozen backers had requested refunds and those had been paid.