Earthblade, the follow-up to metroidvania hit Celeste, gets cancelled
Earthblade, the announced sequel to Celeste, the popular 2D platformer video game released in 2018, has now been cancelled. Developed by EXOK (Extremely OK) Games, Earthblade was first announced in 2022 at The Game Awards with a nearly two-minute long video showing gameplay and a 2024 release date. Unfortunately, fans of Celeste who have been looking forward to the sequel will be disappointed to know they will never be able to play the video game.
According to info revealed in a blog post, the decision to cancel the game was made in December 2024 and was borne from a conflict between members of the team. The conflict in question was caused by disagreement about the IP rights of Celeste
. While specific details were not revealed, the resolution reached by the involved parties was to go their separate ways, and thus end development of the game.
The blog post also revealed that development of the game could have continued but it would have been a painful experience. It also mentioned that there was already pressure on the team to make something bigger than Celeste, and that pressure had made working on the game exhausting. Cancelling Earthblade was also easy to end development as it was not as far along as expected considering how long they had been working on it.
While one of the main parties involved has left EXOK Games and has a new game coming soon, the remaining team members at the game studio will now focus on smaller-scale projects
.
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