Project Rap Rabbit Kickstarter misses campaign goal

The future of Project Rap Rabbit, a narrative-based rhythm game from the creators of PaRappa the Rapper and Gitaroo Man, has been thrown into question as its crowdfunding campaign ended unsuccessfully yesterday. The project had a nearly $1.1 million ask, but backers only put up $204,000 within the deadline.

“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,” wrote the development team, headed up by Masaya Matsuura (PaRappa) and Keiichi Yano (Gitaroo Man). “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.”

The PlayStation 4 and Windows PC game caused a stir with both its high funding goal and even pricier stretch goals, which initially had a Nintendo Switch version at the highest tier. Backlash led the team to rework the game’s stretch goals, but backtracking failed to undo the damage of Project Rap Rabbit’s early bad publicity.

Without the additional funding from the Kickstarter, the developer has halted work on Project Rap Rabbit.

“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,” the campaign update says. “As a result, work on Project Rap Rabbit cannot continue at this time.”

Invoking PaRappa’s catchphrase — “I gotta believe!” — the team went on to add that they’re staying positive, with hope that Project Rap Rabbit can find the help it needs. Until then, watch an early concept gameplay video to see what could have been from this historical rhythm adventure game.