Figurines Shipping
over 7 years ago – Thu, Nov 22, 2018 at 08:15:26 PM

Greetings all,

The Shizume figurines have now arrived and as such I will be arranging their shipment over the next two weeks. Other items such as the Dakimakuras, prints & Posters will be sent separately around mid-December.

As such we have posted a 48 hour notice on Backerkit, essentially you have 48 hours to ensure your address is up to date, before we begin shipping the figurines.

Please remember we do not ship to PO BOX addresses, Lockers or similar drop off locations. The address we send to must be a valid address.

So this is the final deadline for addresses, as by the end of the year we will have shipped all items and will close the backerkit to complete the campaign.

I truly believe this figurine is our best one to date and so I hope you like it.

Other Rewards

The following rewards will be shipped in late December: 

• Echo Tokyo Harem Wars Cards
• Echo Tokyo Graphic Novels
• Hoshi Dakimakura
• Red & Blue Dakimakura
• Sakura Dakimakura
• Shizume Dakimakura

By the end of the year all rewards with the exception of the physical DVD editions of the games will have been sent. The DVDs will then be dispatched once each game is completed and more details on that will follow when that is ready.

Initial Physical Items
over 7 years ago – Fri, Nov 09, 2018 at 10:54:21 PM

Greetings all,

The following items will be dispatched soon:

• Shizume Figurine
• Physical Dakimakuras
• Graphic Novels

Obviously as Echo Tokyo: Phoenix and Echo Tokyo: Reaper are not completed those DVDs will be sent out when those two games are completed and will be shipped together. 

Video Games

Echo Tokyo: Phoenix

Work on Echo Tokyo Phoenix continues, artwork is mostly done and here is some previews of the illustrated scenes in the game.

At this point we are mainly waiting for the final edits and rewrites of the game and then for it to be coded, we believe we are about 40% complete at this point, so hopefully it can be released early 2019.

Echo Tokyo: Reaper

Our plans for echo tokyo: reaper are now in place, the outline is finalised and so work on this game will begin as soon as echo tokyo: phoenix is finished and ready for release. in the meantime we may have the artist start working on the illustration scenes that we know will be needed as well as have the background artist create new backgrounds, such as the keiji apartment background already created:

The game will follow keiji as he works as a mercenary and assassin for money whilst hunting down those who abused and tortured him as a young man. We are currently considering two approaches to development, the first is the standard visual novel approach, which is the most likely. But the second is to create a game that has some gameplay components, such as live action combat (similar to hotline miami) or hidden object style game features. By the time phoenix is finished and released we will have tested these ideas to determine the best way forward.

Physical Items Coming Soon
over 7 years ago – Tue, Oct 09, 2018 at 08:46:31 PM

Greetings all,

I know you may fear things have gone quiet but work does continue albeit slowly. However some things are now getting very close to being ready to ship... Namely the Dakimakuras, Shizume Figurine and the harem cards.

 Our figurine molds have now begun pumping out parts for Shizume ready to be painted, with the painting expected to be finished by the end of the month, before the limited edition figurines are shipped to us by Boat, hopefully arriving by the end of November. The Dakimakuras will be ordered to arrive around the same time.

Shipping

These initial items will all be shipped this year as soon as we have these sets of items in stock, remember you can keep your address up to date via Backerkit. That will then just leave the digital games and the DVDs, each of which will be sent out as soon as they are completed, separately to this first batch of items.

Echo Tokyo: Phoenix

I know things have taken a long time to develop, sadly as you know we had issues with artists and writers and so forth, which sucks. But the game is slowly getting there and hopefully will be released before the end of the Year, if it is then hopefully the DVD's for Phoenix will be included in the December shipments. Failing that they will be sent as soon as the game is released in 2019 or as soon as humanly possible.

Echo Tokyo: Reaper

We have also finalised the outline for Echo Tokyo: Reaper and as soon as Echo Tokyo: Phoenix is finished the writer and developer will begin work on the Reaper title so that it and its physical DVD can be released during 2019 to complete this campaign once and for all.

More details will be posted later in the year once the items begin arriving and we know where we stand with the release of Phoenix and the shipping of the first physical rewards.

Feature Creep Sucks!
almost 8 years ago – Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 01:28:00 AM

Greetings all, it is time to lay down how things are progressing for you all. First of all Dharker Studio has shuttered most of its external studios and third party developers, this includes Random Gubbins and other developers as well as the Echo Tokyo team in part.

Dharker Studios is adjusting its development of games significantly ready for 2019 and onwards to prevent issues that have plagued some of their games in the past, primarily this issue is Feature Creep and we here at Echo Tokyo have allowed that to affect us as well, all with the best of intentions but still those intentions dont get you all the games we promised.

The State of Things

So as it stands now a writer/developer is now working on the game Echo Tokyo: Phoenix, when it is finished she will then work on Echo Tokyo: Reaper. Neither game will be open world like we said in a previous update might occur. Both are being developed in the format we said they would in the campaign when it was live.

That is to say both games will be independant visual novel stories with multiple routes and endings to enjoy. Set within the city of Echo Tokyo. The open world aspects that we allowed to feature creep into the game in past updates have been dropped in favour of completing this campaign and the games we originally promised rather than the games we wished we could provide.

Issues along the way

Many of you may know that the Echo Tokyo games have had a lot of issues along the way, this has led to money being wasted, delays and problems with the development of the games and providing rewards to you our backers. 

The main issue we faced was the primary artist for the games Tonee was unable to delivery any contracted work on time. Not just late but extremely late. We also want to make it clear we did not set these deadlines, he did. He told us how long things would take e.g. A dakimakura design would take 1 week. We then began the commission and it would then take him a month or more to do that one piece.

Over time we learnt through others that he was working on other games, whilst we offered regular work apparantly that was not good enough for him and so he decided to work on other games and that caused most of the delays. Instead of characters and dakis taking a couple of months to complete it total, it took over a year or more.

In the end we have received a bunch of character art and the dakimakura designs and we decided then to stop using Tonee and continue with other more reliable artists. As such similar to our Sword of Asumi game (the first game we made) Echo Tokyo's characters are designed by Tonee but the games CG illustrations are being designed by Julia Kruse.

The other issue we had was feature creep, as we allowed ourselves to persistently consider adding open world content and dynamic stories into the games, which was frankly madness. Doing so would make the games massively expensive well beyond our budget and also cause issues with timing.

Game Development

All of these things have now been put to bed, and whilst there are still a few changes to the two games of this campaign, for the most part Echo Tokyo: Phoenix and Reaper will be created.

Echo Tokyo: Phoenix

The first of the two games is in development as we mentioned with a developer and writer, the entire outline has been created, all backgrounds, illustrations, characters and music delivered ready for implementation. Our writer developer is now putting that all together whilst fleshing out the script. With the aim to release the game within the next 3-4 months. 

This game follows Shizume on her first jobs as a Fixer and Private investigator, in this she will rise to work for the Casino to try and solve a theft of millions of credits from them. This game should be completed and released this year.

Echo Tokyo: Reaper

Our original plan for echo tokyo: reaper has been found to be unsuitable, the character of Keiji is not compelling enough to center a whole story around and as such the design of this game has faltered a little. In the end rather than derail the game completely we have decided to make Echo Tokyo: Reaper a continuation of Shizumes story, following on from the first game to show her as she investigates and hunts a serial killer within the city. We are currently fleshing out the outline, once that is confirmed we will then complete the artwork and music and so forth over the next couple of months so that as soon as Phoenix is completed the writer/Developer can immediately begin on Echo Tokyo: Reaper, with the aim to complete it and release it by April 2019.

Physical Rewards

Nothing in this campaign or any of the Echo Tokyo campaigns has gone smoothly but for us it is nice to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Once these two games are finalised production of the physical rewards will then be completed and shipped, the figurine for which is already in production and so all items should be suitable for shipping in April next year to complete this campaign.

Then What...

As mentioned Dharker Studios has shuttered this team down and so once these two games are completed it is likely that Dharker will close the book on the Echo Tokyo series. For whatever reasons this game series seems cursed and so it is probably best to complete the current plans for the games and move on to greener pastures.

In 2019 and beyond Dharker is planning to only develop two games at any one time, a series of standard visual novel games of various lengths (in general they are getting longer and longer) and a yearly major rpg release every summer. Over the next few years it is likely that Dharker will leave the cyber punk setting behind. But perhaps in a few years time once things are settled there may one day be a return to the cyber punk genre with a new IP but following similar lines to Echo Tokyo.

And so...

Until then we shall continue to work on completing what we promised during this campaign, namely two games: Echo Tokyo: Phoenix and Echo Tokyo: Reaper and designed the best physical rewards we can for you all to enjoy be it the figurine, Dakimakuras or physical edition of the games.

New updates will be posted when the first game is closer to completion in the coming months...

Shizume Figurine
about 8 years ago – Mon, May 28, 2018 at 09:19:16 AM

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