The people behind the James Pond Kickstarter have cancelled its crowd-funding campaign.
With 12 days left, just £16,000 of the £100,000 had been raised, and UK company Gameware admitted the writing had been on the wall.
"Although we have 12 days to go it's clear that we aren't going to make our £100,000 goal, so instead of pretending otherwise and continuing the updates we've decided to be honest with ourselves and with you and stop," read an update on the James Pond Kickstarter campaign.
The team acknowledged the campaign, endorsed by James Pond creator Chris Sorrell, suffered from a lack of "game to show".
"We appreciate we were asking for a lot of faith from you guys, and our mantra from the start has always been to keep the game design as open as possible, with the fans calling the shots. This was a risk, and it didn't work out, but I will say a huge thank you to everyone who pledged."
Despite the setback, Gameware intends to relaunch the crowd-funding campaign and - it hopes - next time things will be different.
"If there's one thing we've learned from running this campaign it's that there sure is still a lot of love for this plucky secret agent fish and we believe it'll only take the right game and the right campaign to make James Pond 4 a reality. So stay tuned and we will be back with more news soon."
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