Frostpunk developers share new details of Project 8, their ill-fated fantasy game about grieving

11 spot CEO explains the cancellation successful much depth

11 Bit Studios person shared caller details and images of their untitled Project 8, a mournful third-person action-adventure that was cancelled past twelvemonth amid layoffs. CEO Przemysław Marszał observed astatine the clip that "it was conceived nether precise antithetic marketplace conditions, erstwhile narrative-driven, story-rich games held stronger appeal" - a remark that made maine privation to unplug the net and crawl into furniture with a choose-your-own-adventure book. Now, Marszał has offered a fuller relationship of the cancellation.

All this comes from a Eurogamer study penned by Prince Robert of Purchese. According to the report, Project 8's main quality was a slender, masculine fig equipped with a slingshot you could usage to distract threats. Set successful a colourful phantasy world, the crippled would person focussed connected stealth, climbing and biology puzzling alternatively than combat. Its communicative was a process of moving done the 5 stages of grief aft losing a loved one. In brief, it sounds similar a substance of Gris, Prince of Persia, and the caller South of Midnight.

So wherefore was it abandoned? According to Marszał, 11 Bit were overambitious astir moving into the third-person action-adventure genre, having expanded their workforce dramatically disconnected the backmost of Frostpunk's success. With small nonstop acquisition to telephone upon, the Project 8 squad struggled with some the comparatively arcane 'stages of grief' conception and much acquainted difficulties, similar however to marque hiding from enemies enjoyable. All this was, of course, exacerbated by wider factors specified arsenic the Covid pandemic.

"We felt similar it would beryllium imaginable to bash different crippled successful a wholly antithetic genre, with a spot of a brainsick hard topic, with a caller team," Marszał told the site. "And it was a spot excessively optimistic to beryllium honest. We thought a batch astir it truthful it wasn't similar 'hey let's bash it', but going back, it was a spot excessively optimistic, and reasoning that games are easy. And making games isn't easy. It's precise hard stuff."

According to Marszał, Project 8 faced predominant delays implicit the people of "seven oregon 8 years" successful development. After each that time, the lone playable parts of the crippled were a prologue and a level themed astir the emotion of denial, which feels alternatively on-the-nose arsenic poetic ironies go. "And erstwhile we heard that we request to adhd different twelvemonth oregon 2 to the accumulation clip it was similar 'wow'," Marszał went on.

Following this projected delay, 11 Bit considered Project 8's likelihood of occurrence against wider marketplace conditions astatine the time. In particular, they looked astatine the reception for akin emotive oregon intelligence action-adventure games, specified arsenic Senua's Saga: Hellblade II and A Plague Tale: Requiem. They yet came to the decision that they would suffer wealth selling the game.

"We allowed ourselves - that was the optimism - to bash excessively hard a game," Marszał concludes successful the piece. "It had a chill premise but that wasn't wise, particularly for a squad that was doing the crippled arsenic a archetypal game. It was conscionable excessively ambitious. It was aggregate aspects that, astatine the end, we knew, no, we won't marque it. Either [cancel it] oregon we volition walk different tens of millions of dollars and neglect heavily."

A fig of 11 Bit staffers were slated to suffer their jobs alongside Porject 8's cancellation, though immoderate look to person been transferred to different projects. Marszał has present confirmed that 18 radical were fto go. If you're 1 of them, I anticipation you've recovered your feet elsewhere.