Well the explanation was they thought they were going to have more money than what the Kickstarter raised, but they didn't, because that funding got pulled almost immediately. At this point, they probably should have just cancelled the game.
Instead, they apparently muddled around for a couple of years, not doing much of anything until the game got a publisher. Then the publisher said, "take that pile of trash and cobble it together into something we can sell." And Underworld Ascendant was released!
It's actually fascinating that they managed to persuade 505 to publish UA. I'd really want to know what their sales pitch was.
When 505 made the publishing deal, the situation was the following:
- OS had burned through all their kickstarter money
- Their first publisher opted out
- They had put the game on hold for almost 2 years without finding a new publisher
- They didn't have anything to show that worked properly (almost a year later, they had a totally broken alpha)
The top OS guys have to be grandmaster-level con artists to sell that deal.