Sword Coast Legends Developers n-Space Close Shop

Sad news - development team n-Space has closed after 21 years. Most recently known for Sword Coast Legends, but previously better know as Nintendo developers behind the likes of Heroes Of Ruin and Geist, a few waves of lay-offs were not enough to keep the moneywolves from their doors, and now they are no more.

One of the studio's artists, Ben Leary, tweeted to confirm the closure of the studio, including a brief statement that maintained the team had tried their best to prevent this. The inference being that perhaps outside forces didn't fight so hard.

"I won't comment on the details of the situation besides the fact that the in-house staff has worked long and hard to keep this from happening."

He goes on to explain that rounds of lay-offs over the last few months hadn't dampened the team's drive to keep going, and specifically mentions n-Space co-founder Dan O'Leary for his "efforts and transparency".

Sword Coast Legends was a bold and brave move for a team that had previously been so focused on console, and especially handheld games. It was, on announcement, to be the D&D framework so many had been waiting for, something that would allow pen-and-paper fans to roll virtual dice across virtual space, rather than having to find time and means to all gather in the same front room. On release it proved something rather different, focused on a bland single-player game, with very limited DMing options and nowhere near the freedom hoped for to create your own games. What we got was a dungeon crawler with very limited scope. It's hard to imagine the time and money that went into it would have been recouped after bad reviews and a flat gamer response.

We've not yet heard how this might affect the game, and have got in touch with publishers Digital Extremes to find out more.

In the meantime, there's a whole team of developers in Florida looking for work. We wish them well.