By Nelson Schneider - 03/24/19 at 03:08 PM CT
In a surprise announcement at the beginning of March, Trendy Entertainment, the Indie developer we at MeltedJoystick love to hate, revealed that they were dead and gone.
While everyone at MeltedJoystick has something of a love/hate relationship with Trendy (some leaning more toward love, while others lean more toward pure white-hot hate), we all recognize the company’s amazing original contribution to videogame genre hybridization, as their ‘Dungeon Defenders’ titles are truly novel takes on the once-booming fad of Tower Defense games. At the same time, we’ve often criticized Trendy for pandering to the tiniest, vocal, HARD-headed fragment of their audience to the detriment of everyone else.
Trendy had been radio-silent since posting the Winter 2018 update to their current Live Service, “Dungeon Defenders 2,” which added a Christmas tree that gives away a free loot box every 24 hours. And I do indeed mean ‘gives’ in the present tense, because as of the time of writing in late March 2019, the Winter decorations and said gift-giving tree are still present in the game. In addition to the servers being slightly flakier than usual, it definitely seemed that something was up in Trendy-Land.
That ‘something’ was revealed when Colin Fisher – known as “Elandrian” to his friends, but known to the MeltedJoystick Crew as “The Fat Guy Who Goes ‘HEH. HEH. HEH.’ As He Makes ‘Dungeon Defenders’ Worse” – posted this message on the revamped ‘Dungeon Defenders’ official forum, revealing that the company had, like a Roman slave, purchased its freedom from the holding company that once owned it. With this newfound freedom, Trendy decided that a name change was in order, and thus chose to dub themselves ‘Chromatic’ Games, despite the fact that all of their games have been in color and that none of their games have anything to do with Evil Dragons.
Alongside this re-christening, Trendy Chromatic announced a Kickstarter campaign for their new next game, “Dungeon Defenders: Awakened,” ostensibly a side-story that takes place between the events of “Dungeon Defenders 2” and the not-yet-announced “Dungeon Defenders 3,” but in actuality, a simple remaster of the original “Dungeon Defenders” employing the updated feature set of the Unreal Engine 4.
Allegedly, Chromatic intends to use the money earned from sales of “Dungeon Defenders: Awakened” to fund “Dungeon Defenders 3,” which seems like a major failure on the company’s part from the outset, considering that “Dungeon Defenders 2” was made a Live Service instead of a stand-alone product for the sake of raking in sweet, sweet Whale Macrotransactions, which should have provided more than enough funding to produce another sequel. Perhaps chasing trends and fads didn’t pan-out the way the holding company overlords expected.
Currently, Chromatic is soliciting suggestions and feedback on their new official forum, and naturally the same folks who lead to the ruin of the original “Dungeon Defenders” are in there pushing their agenda of how that game was perfect. We’ll have to wait and see if Chromatic learned anything from their experience running “Dungeon Defenders 2,” since, as of present, their fan community is largely divided on either side of the “Dungeon Defenders” vs. “Dungeon Defenders 2” schism, while the development staff’s comments have been limited to a handful of jokes.
Comments
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/31/19 at 02:39 PM CT
Actually, DB, "Dungeon Defenders 2" is far less pay2win than the first game, as you don't actually have to pay money for extra characters. In the first game, you had to pay cash for Series EV and the Summoner (who were essential), whereas in the second game you can save up Defender Medals by playing daily/weekly challenges and get them for free.
dbarry_22 - wrote on 03/24/19 at 07:45 PM CT
The more a company tries to micro-transaction me to death, the more likely it is that I'll stop playing their games. I really enjoyed the first Dungeon Defenders, especially playing with friends. But, the second one felt like they were getting even more greedy and I really hate the "pay to win" model. I'm also getting sick of companies going to Kickstarter making players fund games instead of going out and doing the grunt work themselves. If you've made a few games already and STILL need to go to Kickstarter to make a game, I'm thinking your company isn't worth keeping around.
