Unfortunately, Terraria: Otherwold has been canceled. Re-Logic today announced the cancellation of a greatly anticipated kinda-sequel to Terraria which has seen many development issues over the years.
From the announcement:
"Our team has a clear vision for this game – one that we shared with all of you with much shared excitement – and, in spite of all of our efforts, the current state of the game remains equal parts far from that vision and beyond behind schedule from our initial planning when we shared Otherworld with all of you three years ago. Progress has absolutely been made during that time – but unfortunately, a very thorough status review of the game versus its intended design showed both the Re-Logic and 505/Pipeworks teams that things were quite a bit further away from the finish line than we had imagined. Taking the massive amount of work that would be remaining to complete along with the extensive time it would take to get that done, and how that would greatly interfere with the pursuit of other projects on behalf of Re-Logic – it becomes clear that this leaves things in a very undesirable state.
As a result, we have made the decision to terminate development of Terraria: Otherworld."
I'm disappointed because it looked very interesting, but I'm not surprised. They've been open about all the development issues that have plagued the game, and it seems as though they were never quite able to manage those issues.
They also shared the next steps for Re-Logic:
Overall I see this as simultaneously disappointing and good news. We may never see what might have been, but we can stop wondering about it and look forward to what Re-Logic has for us in the future.
Full announcement: https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/this-is-the-end-otherworld-development-cancelled.68594/
From the announcement:
"Our team has a clear vision for this game – one that we shared with all of you with much shared excitement – and, in spite of all of our efforts, the current state of the game remains equal parts far from that vision and beyond behind schedule from our initial planning when we shared Otherworld with all of you three years ago. Progress has absolutely been made during that time – but unfortunately, a very thorough status review of the game versus its intended design showed both the Re-Logic and 505/Pipeworks teams that things were quite a bit further away from the finish line than we had imagined. Taking the massive amount of work that would be remaining to complete along with the extensive time it would take to get that done, and how that would greatly interfere with the pursuit of other projects on behalf of Re-Logic – it becomes clear that this leaves things in a very undesirable state.
As a result, we have made the decision to terminate development of Terraria: Otherworld."
I'm disappointed because it looked very interesting, but I'm not surprised. They've been open about all the development issues that have plagued the game, and it seems as though they were never quite able to manage those issues.
They also shared the next steps for Re-Logic:
- In hindsight, it goes without saying that we never should have spoken publicly about this game as early-on as we did. We will fully own that error in judgement. Moving forward, we will be far more judicious about only sharing information on projects in which we are fully confident in regards to timing, etc. We can only apologize for all of the emotional rollercoaster this caused.
- Trying to outsource development of such a critical title for our company – even if just in part – was not the way to go. Moving ahead, our focus for the core development of new/future titles will be more inward and will seek to utilize our own people. We will share more information there just as soon as we have it.
- Re-Logic has possession of the game (design, code, art, sounds, etc.) as it exists today, and there are still a ton of amazing ideas under the hood here – many of which have never been publicly shared. These are ideas that we have not and will not forget and that you will very likely see implemented in our future titles.
- Active development of Terraria continues - 1.3.6 is still very much in active development. We know that we have not shared a lot in the way of spoilers there – but rest assured that the team has been working tirelessly on our next PC wave.
- This keeps our partners at 505/Pipeworks wholly focused on Console/Mobile/Switch – and there is still a TON to get done there, so that should be good.
Overall I see this as simultaneously disappointing and good news. We may never see what might have been, but we can stop wondering about it and look forward to what Re-Logic has for us in the future.
Full announcement: https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/this-is-the-end-otherworld-development-cancelled.68594/
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Dang, I was really looking forward to Otherworld. At first I wasn't so sure about it, but then I guess it grew on me. I want more Terraria. I'm glad they're still working on 1.3.6, it has been a year or so since I've seen anything new about it.
Cennxx posted some new spoilers about 1.3.6 recently. Some sort of thing that can locally change gravity maybe? And underground fossils.
https://twitter.com/Cennxx
Cool thanks for sharing! (I left Twitter a couple years ago or so.)
I don't do this for a lot of games but whatever Terraria sequel comes out, i'm going to buy it. Sad to hear this one isn't coming out but I don't think I quite got what it was. I don't think they talked much about it for it to form in my mind what kind of game it was. It seemed to be a story based Terraria open game but I'm not really sure about that.
Making games is hard and open ended games more so. Wish them well on what they are doing and if history is a guide we'll keep getting trickling Terraria updates, which is all I guess I could want. Frankly we have a great game, a sequel would be awesome but how much more awesome could a new Terraria game be? I don't know, I guess we'll see.
@Jon from what I read it was supposed to be a Terraria tower defense game. At least that seems to be what I remember. Also, the wiki does state Terraria 2 under future projects or whatever.
Yeah there were going to be tower defense elements at least. It seemed like the the whole motivation was to purify the world. That was something you could do in Terraria but it’s kinda boring. The tower defense in Otherworld was about keeping the corruption from spreading.
I’d like to see some of that in a future Terraria update. A tower at the edge of the corruption to keep it from spreading would be way more fun than digging a 5 block cavern all the way to the underworld
Tower defense 2D sidescroller? Huh. Ok. I really wonder how far they got and sad they couldn't show more of it just to share what they made. That said, I imagine that would drive some fans a bit nuts.
Yeah I don’t think it was like 100% tower defense driven that was just part of it