Terraria: Otherworld, a spinoff/semi-sequel to the survival-crafting game Terraria, has been cancelled by developers Re-Logic due to a failure to make significant forward progress with the game.
The announcement comes from the Terraria forums, where the developers cited an unlikelihood that the game would reach its potential within a reasonable timeframe. Terraria: Otherworld was pitched as somewhat of a What If scenario for Terraria development, a choice to make the game more narrative-focused and RPG-like than the opposite direction they took it during the first game's development. It was first announced just over three years ago in February 2015.
Studio Re-Logic outlined what they believed were the main takeaways from the game, including announcing it at all before they were confident they could do it.
"In hindsight," the post reads, "it goes without saying that we never should have spoken publicly about this game as early-on as we did. We will fully own that error in judgement. Moving forward, we will be far more judicious about only sharing information on projects in which we are fully confident in regards to timing, etc. We can only apologize for all of the emotional rollercoaster this caused."
Re-Logic explains that they are going to continue to focus on the regular version of Terraria and hope to mine Otherworld for some of its ideas in the future.
Our Take
It's never a good feeling when a game gets cancelled, but it seems like they at least learned some lessons from it. It will be interesting to see what they tackle next.