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Skytorn, the Metroidvania-style title from the developer behind 2018's critically acclaimed Celeste, has been scrapped.
Designer Noel Berry dropped the news during a post on Medium, where he revealed that the team had 'struggled with what the game was' during its troubled development cycle.
'To its core it was a procedurally generated adventure game without permadeath, but the procedural elements always clashed with the Metroidvania themes, and I didn’t know how to design around that,' said Berry.
'But we kept working on it, polishing it, adding art and content, to what was ultimately a broken core,' he added. 'I thought that we could keep working on it and be able to restructure the gameplay as we went, as we really figured it out. But at some point you have all these systems and then changing anything at the lower level becomes a lot of work.'
Skytorn was put on hold in 2017 during production of Celeste, although Berry confirmed the team is now moving forward with something different altogether.
'As much as we all love Skytorn and how much it’s meant to us over the last several years, we’re excited for new things and new projects. I’m okay saying it was an amazing learning experience, and we’ll take all these lessons onto our next project.'
Celeste has now sold over 500,000 copies worldwide, and its creator is planning on releasing a series of new 'farewell' stages for the title.
