Thanks for taking the time to present the “other side of the story”. I still find that generally the truth lies somewhere between the two versions of events (Daruma’s having been posted to then subsequently deleted from Facebook).

It does sound like quite an acrimonious split between the directors of Daruma (hence I don’t necessarily believe either story outright).
For example while the Kickstarter states that Cannibal Sector 1 was a partnership between Nightfall Games and Daruma we can see from companies house that isn’t the case from a legal stand point.

Daruma Productionwas founded in August 2016 by 4 people, two of which were associated with Nightfall Games (I use the term associated deliberately).
Nightfall Games was founded in 2018 by two people who are now formerly of Daruma Productions. There is no record of any company by that name prior to Feb 2018 and so at the time, the two individuals who founded Nightfall Games Ltd were presumably the owners of a brand or a trademark or such. They were associated with the Nightfall Games brand.

So Daruma was not in partnership with Nightfall Games, Daruma WAS the partnership; a partnership between the Nightfall Games people and two others. I also find it interesting that the two people associated with Nightfall Games decided to incorporate in February 2018 when up until that point they had not felt any need to register as a business, then resign from Daruma in April and then announce a new partnership with Word Forge Games in June subsequently terminating Daruma’s license to use the brand and IP. It’s almost like, depsite not being in charge of money, that they somehow knew it was about to go belly up and decided to distance themseves from Daruma Productions in order to protect the kickstarter. Now, I can’t necessarily fault anyone for protecting the Kickstarter and ensuring that backers got their goods; at no point have I said that is a bad thing. However I don’t believe for one second that the directors who resigned didn’t know that the project had failed, or at least that Daruma Productions would be unable to complete it. I also reject the idea that the Nightfall Games people had no control or say over the way cash was spent. I also disagree that the Nighfall people bear less or no responsibility for the failure on account of being “non executive directors”. They were directors with an equal share of the company from the outset. How Daruma decided to apportion roles and responsibilities for work is largely irrelevant, as directors they all bear responsibility for the direction of the company – clue is in the name. It doesn’t matter whether they were executive or non executive. If we were to believe everyone, then the person left at Daruma claims not to have known about the problems (their statement said as much), Word Forge are claiming that the Nightfall people didn’t know (or at least had no control) which really does beg the (rhetorical) question who exactly did know what was going on? Mind you, this would explain why the project failed if nobody knows what was going on. So it does seem that, while people may have acted to protect a kickstarter, they have shafted someone by leaving them with a company that is now being liquidated.

So my own view, and I freely admit this is speculation, is that probably everyone involved knew, to an extent, what was going on but that they disagreed on how to resolve the situation and two people decided to act pre-emptively by resigning and taking their brand with them, leaving one (understandably pissed off) person to sort the mess out. Without speculating on peoples’ motives for the actions taken, I think there’s far too much evidence to suggest that anyone involved with Daruma was unaware of the problems they were facing and that they were probably aware at least 6 months before the announcement of the partnership with WFG.

The best advice for all parties (Nightfall, WFG and Daruma), at this point, would actually be to make no comments at all on the liquidation of Daruma or the events leading up to it and comment only on the kickstarter delivery