Late final December, 11 bit Studios, the Polish developer of This Conflict of Mine and the Frostpunk collection, introduced it had cancelled a long-in-development console-focused recreation often called Undertaking 8. This had been in growth since 2018 and had value the studio almost £10m. Till now, although, all we have recognized about Undertaking 8 was that it was a “narrative-driven, story-rich recreation” – CEO Przemysław Marszał used these phrases when referencing the sport’s style, which he stated held stronger market enchantment when it was conceived. And now that I’ve seen the cancelled recreation in motion, I’ve a greater concept of what he meant.
Undertaking 8 was a major departure for a studio recognized for gritty technique video games which might be thick with ethical dilemmas. A two-minute gameplay video taken from a milestone prototype construct and proven to me by Marszał, reveals a third-person motion recreation in a brilliant, vibrant, fantasy world. Undertaking 8 had deeper themes working by it – the overriding concept was for gamers to maneuver by the 5 levels of grief after shedding a liked one – however the general type and action-focused gameplay was in contrast to something 11 bit Studios has ever achieved.
In Undertaking 8, you performed as a slender, masculine character with pale pores and skin and lengthy darkish hair, whose physique was half-covered by a form of magical wrapping or bandage, which might detach from their arm to function a form of weapon. In addition they carried a slingshot for distracting and harming enemies, harking back to the slingshot within the A Plague Story collection – a collection Marszał references whereas speaking in regards to the recreation. The main focus of Undertaking 8 was stealth reasonably than straight-up fight, with climbing and traversal, and environmental puzzle fixing, normally in relation to unusual obelisks discovered floating around the globe – a world stuffed with outsized crops and weird creatures.
The demo jogs my memory, by turns, of Prince of Persia, Rime, A Plague Story and Hellblade – one other collection Marszał references. Oh and the newer South of Midnight. “After we have a look at it, it does look a bit like South of Midnight – with much less combating,” Marszał says.
So what went unsuitable?
Marszał says there are three causes Undertaking 8 was finally cancelled, however to know them correctly, we now have to return in time a bit, to a interval simply after Frostpunk 1 was launched, in 2018. That recreation did very effectively for 11 bit, as This Conflict of Mine had 4 years earlier, so the corporate was flush with money. And that meant development. “We scaled up all over the place,” Marszał says. “From the corporate that was round 90 [people], we scaled as much as – presently it is round 280. It was loopy development. Very optimistic. We had some huge cash from This Conflict of Mine. We had some huge cash from Frostpunk – it offered loopy once more. We had some huge cash and what to do now?” The reply was to take a threat.
“We felt like it could be doable to do one other recreation in a completely totally different style, with a little bit of a loopy troublesome matter, with a brand new workforce,” he says. “And it was a bit too optimistic to be trustworthy. We thought rather a lot about it so it wasn’t like ‘hey let’s do it’, however going again, it was a bit too optimistic, and pondering that video games are simple. And making video games is not simple. It is very troublesome stuff.”
11 bit Studios wished gamers to actually really feel every stage of grief as they moved by them, however this turned out to be a very tough idea to manifest. In any case, how do you make individuals really feel denial? How do you make individuals expertise bargaining? And what does acceptance appear like? “It was troublesome stuff,” he says.
Curiously, Marszał wasn’t conscious that Rime tackled the identical topic as Undertaking 8: transferring by the levels of grief – a topic I beforehand talked at size about with Rime’s director Raul Rubio. And once more, it was a topic that sounded something however simple to grasp. Once I inform Marszał this he smiles, as if relieved Undertaking 8 did not go forward. “Good to listen to that,” he says,
There have been different points with Undertaking 8 too. The stealth gameplay required extra thought than typical, straight-up fight. It revolved round avoidance, however how might 11 bit make that enjoyable? And there have been issues with narration and getting the story throughout. The design was there on paper, then, however when constructed out, vital points have been displaying with it. The one playable elements have been a prologue and a denial stage after it. “So,” says Marszał, a “loopy quantity of labor nonetheless to do.”
Because of this, manufacturing started to slide. “One other delay after delay,” Marszał says. “And after we heard that we have to add one other yr or two to the manufacturing time it was like ‘wow’.” A choice needed to be made.
That is when 11 bit Studios seemed on the wider market to see whether or not it was value, in its opinion, carrying on, and the place Marszał’s comment above narrative-driven, story-rich video games not holding the enchantment they used to got here from. What he means is a selected kind of recreation: the Hellblades and Plague Tales of the world. Video games that had large pleasure a primary time round however much less by the point of their sequels, he says.
“I am not saying that there aren’t gamers for these video games,” he provides. “There are. However the market is totally different,” Marszał says. “If you see what is going on on with the market and while you see okay, your prices are rising: that was the primary second when, from our calculations, we noticed, okay, we wish revenue; will probably be unfavourable. It may very well be actually dangerous for us.”
It is also value contemplating the broader points within the gaming business, and the growing stress each gaming firm appears to be below – a difficulty compounded, in 11 bit Studio’s case, by the rocky begin Frostpunk 2 acquired off to.
“The final two years, it was extraordinarily fucking arduous. We have been so optimistic. We have been too optimistic. We did so many errors. We had issues with initiatives – each considered one of our initiatives was delayed,” Marszał says. Each internally developed video games comparable to The Alters, and externally developed video games for the studio’s publishing arm. This compelled a top-to-bottom reorganisation at 11 bit Studios, and Undertaking 8 was caught in that storm.
“After these seven or eight years of growth, we actually fought arduous, the workforce fought arduous, however we weren’t in a position to cross some problematic design parts,” he says. “We allowed ourselves – that was the optimism – to do too troublesome a recreation. It had a cool premise however that wasn’t sensible, particularly for a workforce that was doing the sport as a primary recreation. It was simply too bold. It was a number of elements that, on the finish, we knew, no, we cannot make it. Both [cancel it] or we’ll spend one other tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} and fail closely.”
The choice was made to cancel Undertaking 8, and 11 bit Studios needed to lay-off 18 individuals as part of the cancellation, “which was loopy painful for us”, Marszał says.
This yr, then, might be a yr of reckoning of some type for 11 bit – a time for it to show the restructuring and delays have labored. A time to make good on Frostpunk 2 and to ship The Alters in June, after a number of delays – it sounds as if a major quantity has improved and adjusted since I previewed The Alters in October 2023. And it is a yr of asserting what’s subsequent – what’s subsequent for the Frostpunk IP and maybe what the brand new IP it is engaged on is.
Let’s hope these video games see growth by.
