Celeste devs cancel lush platformer Earthblade to focus on smaller-scale projects

rockpapershotgun.com:

Celeste and Towerfall creators Extremely OK Games have announced the cancellation of their pixelart exploration platformer Earthblade, in what studio director Maddy Thorson calls a "huge, heartbreaking, and yet relieving failure". The decision to call it quits follows a bust-up within the development team, though this isn't, apparently, why they pulled the plug. Thorson and programmer Noel Berry have found making something "bigger and better" than Celeste exhausting, and have decided to work on smaller projects in future.

Extremely OK revealed Earthblade back in 2021 with Celeste composer Lena Raine handling the soundtrack. A proper reveal followed in 2022 with a smidgeon of plot information: the game would have seen you playing a "child of Fate", exploring a ruined planet. In March last year, Thorson blogged about development difficulties but assured readers that the team were making progress. That brings us to today. It sounds like last year has been more complicated than she originally divulged.

Posting on Extremely OK's website, Thorson writes that a "fracture" formed last year between herself and Berry and co-founder Pedro Medeiros, who was Earthblade's art director and pixel/UI artist for Celeste and Towerfall.

"The conflict centered around a disagreement about the IP rights of Celeste, which we won't be detailing publicly - this was obviously a very difficult and heartbreaking process," she explains. "We eventually reached a resolution, but both parties also agreed in the end that we should go our separate ways. Pedro is now working on his game Neverway, which you should check out - we've played it and it's very promising."

Pedro's departure prompted Berry and Thorson to think hard about the status of Earthblade as a whole. "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," Thorson continues. "I do believe that if we soldiered on despite it all, that Earthblade