Celeste studio Extremely OK Games has announced its long-in-development followup project, Earthblade, is officially cancelled. In a blog post, developer Maddy Thorson provided an in-depth discussion about the relief felt over the game’s cancellation, while admitting the studio had taken several wrong turns over the last few years.
In the wake of the success of Celeste, the studio expanded quickly, driven by the pressure of creating an equally successful followup. Per Thorson, this meant work became a “slog” and pressure meant developing a new game became exhausting.
In the process of creating Earthblade, other troubles also developed – including “a disagreement about the IP rights of Celeste” which won’t be discussed publicly.
While the team “eventually reached a resolution,” it led to a studio split. Extremely OK Games founding member Pedro Medeiros has now left, and is currently working on a new game called Neverway. Per Thorson, the loss of Medeiros did not directly lead into the cancellation of Earthblade, but it did cause the team to reflect on their future direction.
“Losing Pedro wasn’t the only factor in cancelling the game, but it did prompt us to take a serious look at whether fighting through to finish Earthblade was the right path forward,” Thorson said. “The project had a lot going for it but, frustratingly, it was also not as far along as one would expect after such a protracted development process.”
Read: Celeste developer announces new game, Earthblade
After realising the game had become a struggle, Thorson and the rest of the Extremely OK Games team made the decision to cancel it in December 2024. In the month since this decision, the team has looked to determine a future direction, while reckoning with their transparently-described “failures.”
It appears Extremely OK Games will now forge ahead with a much smaller team – Thorson and programmer Noel Berry – to work on new projects with a clean slate.
“We’re prototyping again and exploring at our own pace, and trying to rediscover game development in a manner closer to how we approached it at Celeste‘s or TowerFall‘s inception,” Thorson said. “We still, of course, hope to collaborate with Amora, Kyle, Chevy, Lena, and Power-Up Audio again in the future.”
In saying this, Thorson labelled the decision to scale up Extremely OK one of the team’s core failures, but “[They] gave it all [they’ve] got, and life goes on.”
“We are happy to return to our roots and reclaim some joy in our creative process, and see where that takes us,” Thorson said.
Those who were looking forward to Earthblade have been given a consolation prize in this announcement – a rather neat-looking concept map that shows off the planned world of the game.
