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Fortune’s Run is a pretty rad Early Access retro FPS / Immersive Sim hybrid that’s been rummaging about its niche for a little while now, but its development is about to cease for a long while. Specifically, the main developer is going to prison, and the QA lead is out.
“First of all, I have some stuff going on I need to make public as it’s going to interrupt development,” said the lead developer of Fortune’s Run, Dizzy. “I’ve been sentenced to prison for the next 3 years.” That’s more-or-less the opening statement of the latest development blog posted on Steam. Though Dizzy has chosen not to reveal what’s gone down, they’ve been adamant that he deserves the punishment even though that part of their life is in the past: “I do not have a sex crime. I’m not going to go into specific charges and such or tell you the story. What I did was wrong and that’s all you need to know,” he concluded. There’s more, though.
Image via Team FortuneFortune’s Run will stay in its current state for the foreseeable future
“My case is about 5 years old now, I have been going through the legal process the whole time I’ve been working on [Fortune’s Run],” said Dizzy. “I have finally been found guilty and sentenced, and I’m going away next month. It’s a shame, but it’s the consequences of my actions. I was a very violent person and I hurt a lot of people in my life.”
Dizzy hasn’t been a one-person dev team all along, note. They’ve been working on Fortune’s Run alongside their wife, Arachne, who is also off the project following some traumatic happenings from July 2024: “About three weeks ago, Arachne had a major surgery. Everything should have went well and we were planning on resuming production at a slower pace about a week and a half later, with me taking over some of the more demanding responsibilities as she recovers for the rest of the year,” Dizzie then posted about the matter, adding that “[Arachne] has had multiple complications from the surgery and had to be hospitalized in the ICU two days after being released from the surgery center. We’ve been bouncing around between different departments and hospitals for about a week now. Long story short, she was very ill and almost died but is now stable and has been released home into my care.”
The silver lining to this situation is that Arachne has recovered since, but things got complicated further still: “Once [Arachne] recovered, she decided that she was no longer interested in game development. She was in charge of QA and a few level segments, all of which has been abandoned and I’ve been forced to get by on my own for the past while. It’s been very difficult to do alone but I actually managed, by basically not sleeping, to complete all of the work in time so that it could be released before I’m sent away.”
Dizzie has also added that they “decided to part ways,” which has led to the current situation. Fortune’s Run‘s development is now “completely interrupted,” though Dizzie wants to continue working on it as soon as he is able to. “I want to underline that I’m no longer in financial dire straits since our game actually sold OK, so I should be able to afford rent once I get out, so there’s a chance that if you wait a few years I’ll be able to cap off the release. In fact, there’s not very much content left to work on, I’ve been making stubs and prototypes of the missing levels in my spare time,” he explained.
It’s not all grim, then, though it’s not great, either. Dizzie is clearly intent on continuing the development of Fortune’s Run if at all possible, which is admirable. Also worth keeping in mind is that Fortune’s Run just received a massive new content update that should add a bunch of fresh gameplay to the mix. In conclusion, then, if you’ve been waiting for Fortune’s Run to release from Early Access, I suggest either taking it off your wishlist for the foreseeable future or playing it for what it is. The bits that are there are good, I can tell you that much!
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