Fable Card Game Crowdfunding Canceled, Mystery Partner Steps in to Help Fund It

Flaming Fowl, the team that formed after Fable developer Lionhead Studios closed this year, has canceled the crowdfunding campaign for its new Fable card game, Fable Fortune. However, the game is going to live on. The Kickstarter drive is canceled is because Flaming Fowl has secured funding from an unspecified outside source. This, combined with the team's own personal investment, will be enough to cover the cost of development.

"With the immediate future of Fable Fortune now secure, we have taken the decision to end our Kickstarter campaign early to focus on releasing a closed beta build as quickly as possible," the developer said in a Kickstarter update today.

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At the time of cancellation today (around a week before the campaign was scheduled to end), Fable Fortune had raised £58,852 ($86,343) from 1,536 backers. This is well short of the £250,000 ($367,000) goal, though that doesn't seem to matter now.

With the cancellation of the Fable Fortune Kickstarter, backers will not be charged. As a thank-you to supporters, everyone who backed the project will get access to the alpha and the closed beta when it's released.

"Hundreds" of people have already played the Fable Fortune alpha, Flaming Fowl added. This will remain available (and a balance update is coming in the "very near future"), but the developer is now concentrating on the upcoming closed beta.

"Thanks to your support and the positive reviews from our current players, we know we have something special on our hands and want to enable as many people as possible to experience Fable Fortune over the coming weeks and months," Flaming Fowl said. "Ultimately, we believe following this path is the best way to achieve this goal."

If you did not back Fable Fortune but are interested in checking out the beta, you can register here. Flaming Fowl said it will open the beta up to a "much wider audience" in the near future.

Fable Fortune is planned for release on PC and Xbox One. The Xbox One version was listed on the Kickstarter campaign as a stretch goal at £700,000 (about $1 million). Whether or not the new funding covers this remains to be seen. Flaming Fowl has also said it would like to bring the game to iOS and Android.

Microsoft recently shuttered Fable developer Lionhead, where Fable Fortune was secretly in the works. It's allowing Flaming Fowl to continue development on the game, but is no longer an investor in it.

For more on Fable Fortune, check out GameSpot's previous coverage to learn what it's all about.