Extremely OK Games, the indie dev studio behind pixel platformer Celeste, has released a statement about the unfortunate cancellation of their upcoming game Earthblade.
This may come as disappointing news to those looking forward to the new release, however the small studio released a blog post with an explanation about what had gone wrong. Titled ‘Final Earthblade Update’, the post goes into detail about the decision to cancel the game and the events leading up to it.
Maddy Thorson, one of the lead creators behind Celeste, states in the blog post that “Earlier this year, a fracture began forming in the team. Specifically, this was between us (Noel & I) and Pedro, a founding member of EXOK, longtime friend & collaborator, and art director of Earthblade and pixel/ui artist on Celeste and TowerFall.” She goes on to explain the conflict had centred around a disagreement surrounding the IP rights of Celeste though she doesn’t go into further detail about this.
The blog post explains that the decision to cancel the game was made in December of 2024, but the team felt they needed to wait to announce it. Maddy states that the loss of Pedro wasn’t the only contributing factor in the cancellation of the game, but it caused them to take a step back and assess if finishing Earthblade was the right step for them. She mentioned that working on the game had been a struggle for a long time, and that it felt like there was a deeper problem. Maddy mentions that “Celeste’s success applied pressure on us to deliver something bigger and better with Earthblade, and that pressure is a large part of why working on it has become so exhausting.”
Maddy is clear in this post that Pedro isn’t to blame for the cancellation of Earthblade and that cutting ties with him gave them an opportunity to reassess.
The blog post also mentions that Pedro is working on his own game called Neverway. Maddy states that “we’ve played it, and it’s very promising“. Maddy also clarifies that “Pedro and the Neverway team aren’t the enemy and anyone who treats them as such isn’t welcome in any EXOK community.”
The blog post concludes with the statement that the team want to take the lessons they’ve learned from Earthblade and “wipe the slate clean, and refocus ourselves back to smaller-scale projects.”
Whilst the cancellation of any game can be disappointing, we look forward to seeing what EXOK have planned for the future and seeing where they go from here.
About the Author
Hayley Louise
she/they
Hayley spends most of her time gaming, but when she's not doing that you can find her doing all kinds of nerd-adjacent things like playing board games, building Lego, reading books and talking nerdy to everyone who will listen.
