The Last Night, a side-scrolling cyberpunky platformer, initially unveiled at E3 2017 (which is before I started doing my gig, so I had to dig a little bit), is facing some unexpected troubles, according to its developer, Tim Soret. Or maybe more precisely, more unexpected troubles.

The Last Night is no stranger to controversy. After the announcement at E3 people dug up some, shall we say… unsavory statements made by the developer in support of Gamer Gate and decrying feminism. This had led to a short kerfuffle culminating in, thankfully, Tim apologizing for his past behavior, distancing himself from it and with the publisher Raw Fury stating support for Tim with a firm belief that these past events do not reflect the person he is today.

This time something even bigger probably happened as Tim, out of nowhere, wrote on Twitter that the team encountered massive legal & financial issues, which led to the cancellation of the trailer initially intended for the Games Awards show. The tweet concludes with a call for financial support to anybody interested, mostly directed at potential sponsors.

An aura of mystery surrounds the whole thing. There’s nothing really to suggest that this new controversy has anything to do with the old controversy, but a tentative “possibly” is of course warranted. Though the legal nature of the issues faced by the team would suggest something different altogether. The Last Night as you can see above certainly wears its influences proudly, that’s the nature of the cybperpunk genre, so it’s possible that an entity holding legal rights to one of the sources for inspiration, decided to act. So I guess what I’m saying is: there’s n’t anything to suggest that this is CDPR’s doing, but again a tentative “possibly” is warranted.

Tim is very sparse on the details and he probably has to be, given the subject matter. Which is all very cyberpunky indeed, the genre of the game perfectly encapsulates events like this happening.

So that’s where we are. The game’s estimated release remains as TBA for now and information will probably start to slowly trickle down and personally I hope this project succeeds. The technical expertise at display here is truly marvelous, this blending of pixel art and photo-realism looks pretty amazing, I had no idea you could even DO that with pixels!

2019 is off to a great start.