Terraria spin-off Otherworld cancelled three years after it was announced
"Otherworld simply is never going to reach its potential…"
Terraria spin-off Otherworld has been cancelled three years after it was announced.
Terraria: Otherworld was announced in February 2015 as a spin-off from the hugely popular Terraria series. It was intended to task players with purifying the world of the Corruption by finding and activating purifying towers that push back the spread. The idea was that it would include more strategy and RPG elements, such as a new tower defense mechanic, as well as a skill tree.
A year ago, Terraria owner Re-Logic rebooted Otherworld after dumping Dutch developer Engine Software in favour of Pipeworks, a studio that did Terraria re-write work on console and mobile. This after what sounded like a troubled development.
Now, Re-Logic has cancelled Otherworld entirely, suggesting development under Pipeworks didn't go well, either.
"Our team has a clear vision for this game - one that we shared with all of you with much shared excitement - and, in spite of all of our efforts, the current state of the game remains equal parts far from that vision and beyond behind schedule from our initial planning when we shared Otherworld with all of you three years ago," Re-Logic said in a post on the Terraria forum.
"Progress has absolutely been made during that time - but unfortunately, a very thorough status review of the game versus its intended design showed both the Re-Logic and 505/Pipeworks teams that things were quite a bit further away from the finish line than we had imagined. Taking the massive amount of work that would be remaining to complete along with the extensive time it would take to get that done, and how that would greatly interfere with the pursuit of other projects on behalf of Re-Logic - it becomes clear that this leaves things in a very undesirable state.
"As a result, we have made the decision to terminate development of Terraria: Otherworld.
"We sincerely thank both of our external development teams for their hard work on the game, but at some point, we have to be honest with ourselves and realise that Otherworld simply is never going to reach its potential in any sort of reasonable time or fashion."
Re-Logic added that it should never have announced Otherworld as early on as it did. ("We will fully own that error in judgement.") And it said it was a mistake to outsource development of the game. Ideas created for Otherworld may see the light of day, however, in future titles, Re-Logic said.
Meanwhile, development of Terraria continues, with an update for the PC version due out, and 505/Pipeworks continuing to work on the console, mobile and Nintendo Switch versions.