Clang, a motion-controlled medieval sword fighting simulator that was successfully crowd-funded through Kickstarter, has been cancelled.

Clang finished its 30 day Kickstarter campaign with US$526,125 (NZ$660,150) from 9,023 backers. Its developer, Subutai Corporation, then sought additional revenue from a publisher, but was unable to find one willing to support the game.

In a final update on Clang's Kickstarter page, project leader, sci-fi author, and would-be game developer Neal Stephenson announced the game's cancellation.

"Members of the team made large personal contributions of time and money to the project before, during, and after the Kickstarter phase," Stephenson said. "Some members, when all is said and done, absorbed significant financial losses. I am one of them; that has been my way of taking responsibility for this."

"The team had considerable incentives - emotional and financial - to see Clang move on to the next round of funding. They showed intense dedication and dogged focus that I think most of our backers would find moving if the whole story were told. I will forever be grateful to them. In the end, however, additional fundraising efforts failed and forced the team to cut their losses and disband in search of steady work."

Stephenson said much of the blame for Clang's failure rested on his shoulders.

"I probably focused too much on historical accuracy and not enough on making it sufficiently fun to attract additional investment," he said.

"As all this was happening, new ideas and opportunities presented themselves. These reflect a lot of experience that was gained and connections to the industry that were made during that project. Although these ideas and opportunities may ultimately wind up in some of the same places we wanted to take Clang, they will do so in non-obvious ways, by starting from a clean sheet of paper in each case, building new teams, and pursuing projects that in some cases have no obvious connection to historical swordfighting.

"I have delayed talking publicly about these projects for a long time because I kept thinking that at least one of them would reach a point where I could describe it in something other than generalities. I apologize for that delay. But now a year has passed since the last update and I've decided that it's cleaner and simpler to cut the cord, and announce the termination of Clang."

A prototype of Clang was delivered to backers along with other tiered rewards last year, however, Stephenson was quick to admit that while "the prototype was technically innovative", it "wasn't very fun to play."