Faith is a terrible thing to waste. In 2016, an artist named Kuja had a dream. He saw the endless flood of unfinished games based upon the coveted Legend of Krystal demo by Playshapes, and decided that a fresh attempt with new art assets might break this seemingly endless trend of unfulfilled dreams. In stepped Abelius, a strange programmer from Spain, and the two set out to begin the project that would be known as LoK Rebirth.
Things seemed promising at first, as they often do with ambitious projects such as this. The initial updates lacked content and the gameplay was padded with obnoxious busywork, but progress was slowly being made. However, as time went by, Kuja grew silent while Abelius continued to post more about his personal life instead of the game itself. Someone named Vlad was mentioned in passing. The exact funding that the project was getting on patreon was hidden by Kuja one day, never to be seen again, leaving people to wonder how well things were actually going with it all. Then, near the end of 2018, something major happened: After two years of work, the project was going to be reset.
The exact reasons for this sudden change of plans are still unknown, owing in no small part to the conflicting testimonies from all of the involved parties in this debacle. From what can be pieced together, Kuja wanted to bring in a bigger team for the project, including the aforementioned Vlad, and Abelius refused to share his work with these people. To circumvent this issue, the new team simply started over from scratch, leaving Abelius to meander on the sidelines. He would eventually try to start up his own project, with art assets by Kuja once again, but this too fell apart once Kuja completely severed ties with him around the dawn of 2021.
Back at LoK, ambition took the helm once more. The rebirth of Rebirth was going to be bigger and better than anything the previous version was aiming for: 3D maps, eight-directional paperdolls instead of the simple two-directional models of yore, a KOTOR-style combat system, and less of an emphasis on the pornographic side of things. After nearly three years of work, the 3D maps were completely thrown out, the extra directions for the models have utterly bottlenecked the progress on animations, the combat system is nowhere in sight, and there’s less explicit material available in-game than ever before.
As stated earlier, the seeds of this project were sewn by Kuja in 2016. This was going to be the game that broke the trend; the one project that didn’t ride on the coattails of the now decade-old demos by Playshapes. Now, it’s just another unfinished brick in the wall of half-baked demos, sitting shoulder to shoulder to High Tail Hall and The Rack. Some curses were never meant to be broken.