No Survivors: Jasper Byrne's New Game Canned

Oh, hm. Well boo. If you'll remember, Lone Survivor maestro Jasper Byrne recently announced that he was leaving behind the cobweb-coated confines of survival-horror to enter a realm one part Dark Souls and one part Zelda. I quite enjoy both of those things, and Lone Survivor pushed all of my most precious of buttons in highly sensual ways. I was, then, quite excited about Byrne's latest and (potentially) greatest. But now, I am markedly less excited, because it's somewhat tough to get my hopes up for something that no longer exists.

Over on his Internet word journaltron, Byrne explained why New Game + won't be seeing the light of day - at least, for now.

"I have decided to abandon the project. It’s been a very tough decision to make, quite heartbreaking really, but it IS the right thing to do. It was too big for a single person to make. This is the root of the problem. It wasn’t that I fell out of love with the idea, just that I can’t physically do it."

"I reached a point where it was getting very frustrating: the game demanded a lot of animation, very detailed level design, and a huge amount of gameplay code, all of which were taking so long that it felt excruciating. I’d like to say sorry to any fans who were looking forward to it - it’s still a game I’d love to play, and should I ever have a team to work with in future, it’s definitely an idea I’d like to come back to."

So it's a fairly heartbreaking turn of events, but clearly, Byrne had good reasons. I do hope he gets the chance to revisit it someday, though. I had the privilege of learning a bit more a while back, and this one really did seem to have some strikingly fascinating ideas underpinning it. As he said in the blog entry, all most certainly is not as it seems.

Time will tell, though. In the meantime, I still haven't gotten Lone Survivor's red ending. I should go do that!