Here on Brazil, a programmer costs more or less 3000 reais a month, an artist probably makes similar money, if you add 1000 reais because of work legislation, it is more or less 4000 reais per month, I wont count taxes because you only pay taxes over the income you produce, no income, no taxes, kickstarter money enters as injection of capital not income. So, a single programmer, lets say you pay him a full wage without any other agreement like part time work or whatever... a single programmer costs 48000 reais a year.
So, nowdays the exchange rate is something like 5,76 reais a dollar, meaning 100.000 dollars is 576.000 reais, for this amount of money, you can pay a team of 2 programmers and 2 artists for three years, lets assume here, you are doing remote work or using the house of one of the team as base to cut expenses... yes, you can produce a pretty big cRPG with that money but really depends of the country you are doing it. 100.000 dollars cant buy toilet paper on Europe. Maximum you can do is a two guys team for an year, living on very shitty conditions, also, voluntary unpaid/part time work is inconsistent and you need to find a crazy mad man to help and crazy mad men that arent lazy fucks dont grow out in trees.
Also, this RPG even on the ideal scenario of you doing it on a country with weaker currency like Ukraine, Russia, Turkey or Brazil, you would still need to have ALOT of cutting corners, no fancy VFX, no fancy animations, alot of text screens and minimalist dialog. Not wanting to minimize the work of steemed codexian poster JarlFrank, have no doubt he did great stuff on the project but if it was me behind this, I wouldnt spend a single cent hiring anyone that isnt a programmer or artist, not because worldbuilding work isnt good, I like it alot and I would pay for it if I could, but because with this budget, the first thing I would cut would be writing. They paying for someone to do worldbuilding for them when they have six months to one year tops of paid programmer and artist labour, shows they greatly underestimated the problem they had, especially when they are on fucking Germany.
So, yes, my friends, this project is dead unless they eat from their savings for unpaid work (what seems they wont do and I dont think it is a good idea as this game is very niche with zero marketing) or they get a publisher but with the guy going AWOL means it is very unlikely. No publisher will pay a single cent for them with nebulous copyright issues plaguing the project.
