$2.5 Million-Plus Kickstarter Project PuffPals: Island Skies Goes Dark, Backers Requesting Refunds En Masse

PuffPals: Island Skies originally launched on Kickstarter on April 6, 2022, and seemingly had a lot of potential. With an original goal of $75,000, developer Fluffnest’s game promised an Animal Crossing-like experience on PC where players could customize their characters and home, explore several biomes, and make friends with anthropomorphic animals called PuffPals. Stretch goals promised features like cooking, pets, new biomes, and multiple other incentives that were apparently tantalizing enough to blow the game’s original funding goal out of the water. As reported by Kotaku, another factor behind the massive amount of money raised is that backers could buy “add-ons,” like plush toys. Right now, the project sits at $2,564,821.

Unfortunately, Kickstarter rug pulls aren’t new, and this situation contains a few of the common signs. As of writing this, the last update on the Kickstarter page was May 20, 2025, with noticeable gaps in communications between previous logs. The comment sections underneath several of its Kickstarter updates are rife with discussion about delays on their promised goods, poor communication from Fluffnest founders David Pentland and artist usLily, and issues with the project’s Discord channel. Additionally, the trademark for Puffals: Island Skies had already been abandoned in 2023. 

Meanwhile, there has also been public friction between Fluffnest and several of its development partners. While much of PuffPals was outsourced to Room8 Studio, Fluffnest claimed in its latest Kickstarter update that disagreements with Room8 Studio’s leadership made them doubt that this studio could deliver. At the same time, Room8 is currently suing Fluffnest and Petland for contractual fraud. This is among multiple other lawsuits that have been levied against Fluffnest, including one from a concept artist who is claiming to be unpaid and shared their experience on Reddit.  

Currently, the game’s pre-order button on Kickstarter leads to an expired domains tracking page. Similarly, navigating to Fluffnest.com gives an error that reads, “The store is unavailable.” Backers are requesting refunds in quick succession, but considering Fluffnest’s radio silence, it seems very possible that no one will be getting their cash back—this is always the risk that comes with backing a Kickstarter, as refunds are issued by those who organized the campaign, not the platform itself. Regardless, no one feels good after being scammed.