After the failed kickstarter from last year I thought Reborn would never get finished. In a post from two months ago that I missed the developer gave a short update.

Been a while since our last post. REBoRN is still alive. Not much can be said until our official press release. Thanks for your patience :)

Elemental-Labs has launched the new website for REBORN, and shared more details about the games future on the developers blog.

Team REBORN is working hard on something very special for our fans, and we are keeping our calendars locked down for Game Developers Conference on March 17th, 2014 at the Moscone Center West, in the heart of San Francisco's SOMA district. We will announce more on this as it becomes available.

GDC means a great deal to us because this will not only help motivate Team REBORN, but rather, through collaboration with the press, we are able to disseminate information worldwide. Each teammate on project REBORN has worked extremely hard and diligently to make ends meet in terms of having to manage without the luxuries of a full-time paid gig down to the allocation of time. We are confident however, and proud of each other’s work thus far and look forward to showing the world what we have been working on.

Furthermore, Team REBORN is extremely fortunate to have not only supportive industry friends, but rather fans from all over the world, like you. It is fans like you who make it all worthwhile for us to continue and pursue our dreams of making a quality game that is worth taking that extra time on a Saturday and/or Sunday to play through. That said, thank you very much for everyone's patience with us and we look forward to bringing you something quality in the coming months!

Capsule Computers interviewd Elemental Labs about their cancelled kickstarter REBORN.

Q. There are many different mythologies and legends that can be drawn upon, so why did you choose to focus on Japanese lore for REBORN?

A. I started tinkering with computers and playing video games at an early age. Playing games like The Killing Game Show on the Commodore 64, Blazing Lasers on turbografx 16, Rivercity Ransom on the NES, and Final Fight, Street Fighter II, and Final Fantasy games on SNES all had a great impact and influenced my childhood years. As I got older, I started tinkering with cars—specifically Japanese imports—and my affinity for Japanese culture grew from there. I was fortunate enough to take many trips to Japan over the years and make a great many friends there. Furthermore, I travelled through much of the country, learning and absorbing its rich and dynamic history and folklore. Japan is truly a spiritual place that is alluring because of its traditionalism juxtaposed with modern society. Therefore, making an RPG about a samurai in a cyberpunk world just seemed to mesh with my experiences perfectly.

Q. With many different samurai to choose from, especially those from the Sengoku era, what led to the decision to base the main character off of Miyamoto Musashi?

A. Every culture has its own folk heroes; for example, America has Davey Crockett, England has Robin Hood, and France has Joan of Arc. Japan has numerous samurai folk heroes, but Miyamoto Musashi is probably the most well-known. He is iconic not only in Japanese history, but also in the field of martial arts. Businessmen in Japan often adopt the philosophy of his book, THE BOOK OF 5 RINGS, when conducting business despite the fact that Musashi wrote the book to describe his philosophy regarding combat.

Q. The contrast between traditional Japanese lore and the advanced technological powers and augmentations created by Nexus Roku is stark. What led to the idea between traditional vs futuristic conflict?

A. I wanted to make a samurai game centered around Musashi, but rather than having it take place in 17th century Japan, I thought a hyper-modern setting would be an interesting approach. One day, I was having coffee at Night Owl (a quaint little coffee shop in downtown Fullerton) with Eric Thuan. I was telling him about the game’s concept. We came up with the idea that one of the themes we could include to make the story balanced, rich, and dynamic, was to explore themes of self-discipline and progress—maxims of many forms of martial arts—juxtaposed against technology, which is supposed to make life easier for all mankind. That is why we decided to inject WuXing and the five Chinese elements of nature.

Elemental-Labs has canceled funding for REBORN with a new update saying it will re-launch in November.

REBORN (Canceled) Redux Campaign in November 2013

I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the support and warm reception that you gave to project REBORN.  However unfortunate as this may be, after thinking about our Kickstarter campaign and talking to backers regarding our reward levels and various other requests for ports including our stretch goals, we really want to consider a relaunch of REBORN with many things about our campaign corrected and refined.  I personally want to ensure that our current backers receive a special incentive for their support and encouragement during this very difficult time for Team REBORN, as well as myself.  For future backers, I welcome you and want to ensure each one of you in our crowd-funding community that you will like what we will offer in our redux campaign.  We are only here because of our hardwork and the faithful support of you, therefore we will not forget about anyone! As such, I will be contacting each one of you to inform you of your reward for supporting us.  For newcomers, we welcome you and sincerely apologize for this inconvenience.  We want to say please standby for the redux campaign in November 2013.  

Sometimes it’s hard to examine failure while the pain caused by it still lingers, but being an entrepreneur and an indie studio means sometimes getting back up off the canvas when you’ve been knocked down, and simply refusing to accept a result you don’t like. To me, failure is often a great chance to rediscover one of the many paths to success, and Kickstarter is no exception to this so that is why the team and I have considered contacting our community of backers first before we pulled the plug temporarily.

REBORN is a new kickstarter that seeks $200,000 to get funded. The project is described as a RPG that fuses Japanese lore with futuristic cyberpunk western themes.

Now I'm not going to cover this completely as it looks to be more of a multiplayer game.