Project Rap Rabbit Kickstarter falls way short

The proposed new rhythm action title from two of the genre’s biggest names has fallen well short of its crowdfunding target.

Project Rap Rabbit was to be made by PaRappa the Rapper creator Masaya Matsuura and Gitaroo Man creator Keiichi Yano. The game was looking for a somewhat ambitious 855k, but ultimately ended up raising just 162k.

When we first started on Project Rap Rabbit, we knew we were beginning a long and ambitious journey to redefine one of the most creative gaming genres of all,” an update said.

We’ve always considered ourselves fortunate to have some of the greatest gaming fans and communities on our side, but over the past month we’ve been more humbled than ever by your support. Your excitement for Project Rap Rabbit has been wonderful to behold, but today we must sadly accept that our crowd-funding journey must end here.

We knew that sourcing funds for a high-quality rhythm-action game would be tough, and though we knew that Project Rap Rabbit would be an incredible game, unfortunately we weren’t able to do enough to prove that to the wider world. We sadly are not in the position to be able to fund further production for a future crowd-funding relaunch involving a title deeper in development, and wouldn’t want to scale back our vision. As a result, work on Project Rap Rabbit cannot continue at this time.”

The reasons for this failure could be debated at length. Certainly the genre is not what it was, but crowdfunding has over the years brought many niche titles to market. The campaign was not the smoothest, and it lacked tangible assets, but the likely culprit remains the very high funding target. The crowdfunding hype is not what it was.

Nonetheless, it appears that some hope for the title remains.

You don’t make games such as PaRappa The Rapper, Gitaroo Man and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan without being optimistic in life. To paraphrase one our best-loved creations: "We gotta believe,” the update added.

While you didn’t see Project Rap Rabbit at any conferences or booths during E3 week, we had a very, very busy E3 filled with meetings about our vision for the future of rhythm-action. So what happens next? At this moment it’s far too early to say, but thanks in part to your overwhelming support we know that our vision for Project Rap Rabbit hasn’t gone unnoticed.”