Deliver Us Mars developers lay off all staff but plan to 'rebuild brick by brick'

The developers of sci-fi action-adventure Deliver Us Mars have laid off all their staff. The news was announced by KeokeN Interactive's leadership in a statement in which they state they have "exhausted all our possible options" of finding funding for a new project. They also say they plan to rebuild the company.

"Heartbroken, we've had to lay off our team at KeokeN because of nothing substantial materializing directly after our visit to GDC. We’ve unfortunately exhausted all our possible options for publishing, work for hire, and co-development," begins a statement shared on X by CEO Koen Deetman and managing director Paul Deetman.

"It is our utmost priority to make sure our lovely team finds a new home somewhere else, so if you have any positions available in Programming, Tech Art, Porting, Level Design, Audio, Animation, Production, Office Management, contact us, so that we can introduce you to the very best people who have been at the heart of KeokeN over the past 10 years.

"Paul and I are heavily beat, but far from beaten. It’s our personal mission to rebuild KeokeN brick by brick like we’ve done before, in the name of our people and to continue the legacy of our games."

The statement concludes by saying that they "preparing a Kickstarter soon for our much-anticipated Deliver Us Home."

KeokeN released Deliver Us The Moon in 2018 and its sequel Deliver Us Mars last year. Katharine praised its marriage of planet-sized problems with gripping interpersonal drama, but found fault with its "rote puzzles" in her Deliver Us Mars review. The game was published by Frontier Foundry, the publishing arm of Frontier Developers which experienced its own layoffs late last year. It has been a terrible two years in the games industry in general for layoffs.