Ecco creator's Kickstarter fails

The man behind the classic Ecco the Dolphin has fallen short in his Kickstarter campaign to fund a spiritual successor to the title, The Big Blue.

Developer Ed Annuziata was seeking $665,000 but only managed to raise $55,764 before the clock ran down on the project. He does however remain undeterred by the setback and instead intends to make a smaller version of the game to help drum up more support for his vision.

Annuziata attributes the failure partly to the ambitious design of the project and argues that people will struggle to see how compelling the title will be.

'If you can play Little Blue and feel it you will have much less doubts about the Big Blue,' said Annuziata. 'I am absolutely certain that if you could try the game and see how beautiful and unique it will be, most people would not hesitate to back it.'

Little Blue will be the subject of a fresh Kickstarter campaign, albeit one with a much lower target. It will be less ambitious but fully playable and the campaign will boast a better prototype, written descriptions and examples to make it clearer to backers how the game will actually play.

Little Blue will be made available for free with a direct link to a planned third Kickstarter campaign to try and get The Big Blue funded a second time.

The Big Blue was initially described on its Kickstarter page as a massive adventure game featuring exploration, quests, 'action puzzle solving' and the collection and spawning of life forms. All creatures in the ocean were to be controllable and players could control multiple creatures at once using swarm mechanics.

A very early prototype playable in a browser was made available from the Kickstarter page and the final product was destined for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android, with Annuziata proclaiming that he would convince Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo to embrace the game once the first version was released.