The builders behind Fable card sport spin-off Fable Fortune and the digital adaptation of dungeon-crawling board sport Gloomhaven have revealed a brand new upcoming co-op RPG… solely to announce on the similar time that the upcoming sport’s improvement has been placed on pause amid layoffs on the studio and problem discovering funding.
Flaming Fowl had been based again in 2016 by a bunch of former Fable devs out of authentic studio Lionhead, selecting up the Fable-verse digital card sport within the wake of the veteran British studio’s closure. The Hearthstone-ish card sport ultimately made it out of early entry in 2018, lasting three years in whole earlier than having its servers switched off in 2020.
After that, Flaming Fowl caught with the melding of tabletop and digital, bringing chunky fantasy journey Gloomhaven – which is a bit like Dungeons & Dragons as a board sport, however with crunchy card-driven fight – to PC by way of early entry in 2019. Lik the tabletop authentic, it was fairly cracking.
Between engaged on DLC for Gloomhaven, evidently Flaming Fowl discovered time to work on one thing model new for the studio, revealing it this week. Ironmarked is a co-op RPG for one to a few gamers with turn-based fight – retaining that lineage from Gloomhaven alive – set in a fantasy world impressed by Renaissance-era Italy which you could go and try for yourself on Steam proper now due to a recent demo.
![Fire blazes through a kitchen during combat in turn-based co-op RPG Ironmarked](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/ironmarked-content-02.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
Sadly, that demo could be all we get of Ironmarked for some time, as alongside revealing the sport and launching its demo, Flaming Fowl announced that they’d be placing the sport’s manufacturing on maintain and had laid off a number of workers in an effort to “downsize”.
The studio attributed the unlucky mixture of occasions to “the present lack of funding within the video games trade”, with the discharge of Ironmarked’s demo each an effort to safe future funding for the sport and, considerably soberingly, present a portfolio for these now needing to seek out employment elsewhere within the trade. (With the variety of builders I see on social media typically expressing frustration at a lot of their work being locked behind NDAs for cancelled initiatives, that is a minimum of a welcome change.)
With Ironmarked on pause till funding is raised, Flaming Fowl stated they’d shift to creating one thing smaller that they’re in a position to fund themselves.
It’s a reasonably tragic state of affairs for the studio, albeit one which’s sadly removed from uncommon today. Good luck to these former Flaming Fowl people in search of their subsequent job, and to these nonetheless on the studio engaged on no matter comes subsequent.