Swery’s The Good Life is getting another shot on Kickstarter

Deadly Premonition creator Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro tried to bring his next game, The Good Life, to market with a crowdfunding campaign on Fig last year. It failed, but the developer promised not to give up on the project. After a few months of silence and a reevaluation of the project, Swery says The Good Life is coming back.

Swery, along with developers at White Owls and Grounding, announced that The Good Life is coming back for a second stab at crowdfunding. The developers plan to launch a Kickstarter for the role-playing game in March.

In messages posted to Twitter today, Swery, creative director Yukio Futatsugi and art director Noboru Hatta talked about the game’s revival.

“[W]e decided to turn our temporary setback into a chance to make The Good Life better,” Swery said. “We exhaustively analyzed and re-examined our campaign and initial plan, and made many critical adjustments.”

Swery and team originally pitched The Good Life as an RPG set in a rural English town called Rainy Woods. Players would assume the role of a photographer named Naomi, who discovers that the residents of Rainy Woods turn into cats (or dogs!) at night. The concept was intriguing, but it didn’t convince many players to back the project. Swery said that the campaign had its share of problems, including that the game’s announcement was leaked and that the team didn’t prepare well enough.

On Twitter, Swery outlined “six changes in order to ensure success.” Those include “powerful partnerships,” a change to the funding target and updates to the game’s design and graphical style.

Noboru Hotta, the game’s art director, said the team has been busy working on a “brand-new look.”

“Our entire art team re-examined the art direction and style for the game and is now working on redesigning it,” Hotta said. “Thanks to the enhancements we’ve made to the game design, we’ve also been able to work in new ideas which have helped to further evolve the art style.”