The studio behind Celeste, Extremely OK Games, released an official blog post announcing the cancellation of Earthblade. The game was intended to be an exploration-action 2D platformer featuring a similar art style to Celeste. Unfortunately, due to a fracture within the development team, the studio decided to stop working on the highly anticipated project.
The conflict stems from a disagreement about Celeste’s IP rights. While the developer didn’t want to elaborate in detail, they mentioned that this led to the team separating. “Pedro is now working on his game Neverway, which you should check out – we’ve played it and it’s very promising,” the developer wrote.
The Celeste developer explained that EXOK co-founder Pedro Medeiros’ departure wasn’t the only reason behind Earthblade’s cancellation. Although they still believed the game would have been great, there had been little progress despite working on it for four years. “The project had a lot going for it, but frustratingly, it was also not as far along as one would expect after such a protracted development process,” they said.
They said that Celeste’s success had put great pressure on the team. They felt that Earthblade had to be bigger and better, which made working on the project feel exhausting. Pedro’s departure helped the team realize that they had lost their way. They also stressed that Pedro and the Neverway team members weren’t to blame for this decision.
After canceling Earthblade, the remaining team members of Extremely OK Games want to focus on smaller projects. They aim to approach their next project with the same attitude they had while developing Celeste. “Scaling the core team up post-Celeste has ultimately been a failure, and that’s okay,” they said.
Fans who heard the news were extremely disappointed but understanding. Many agreed that although they would have liked to play Earthblade, they understood why the team canceled the project. “Well, that sucks,” one Redditor wrote. “I wish the work could be repurposed in these situations—releasing what was done in a form that lets people know what could’ve been—but maybe that just makes things worse. I don’t know.”
