Sunsetting Spellcraft

Our aim in creating Spellcraft was to build a real-time, fast-action game that players everywhere would be able to enjoy on every game platform – PC, mobile, and console – and be able to compete fairly against others without a competitive disadvantage due to their input devices. After all, players using keyboard & mouse can generate so many actions per minute that mobile players would melt their fingers trying to keep up!

Over several years of development we created a game in line with our vision. We kept it a secret out of concern that something genuinely new would be copied before we could bring the game to market. And our warring desires for secrecy and novel game-play led us to make a mistake: we didn’t do enough to validate that our game would find enough players who love it.

After our last public test of Spellcraft we determined – based on player feedback and retention – that the game was far from ready. While some enjoyed the game and played it frequently – even obsessively – too many didn’t continue to play. With more work to improve the new player experience, perhaps we could fix this?

So we went back to do more prototyping. We didn’t constrain our team to working on a single proposal so as to keep ideas flowing. Over the last several months we generated many new prototypes – some that looked and played like Spellcraft, and others that were wildly different.

We failed to find a path forward for Spellcraft which would also widen the game’s appeal enough to be financially viable, and so made the decision to halt development.

Over the next few weeks we will be shuttering the game & its live services, though we’ll keep the Discord server running for a time. It’s been difficult for our team to find our path through what has been a significant disappointment, as I’m sure it is to some of you reading this. We appreciate each and every player that helped us build Spellcraft, and we’re sorry we didn’t find a path to complete it.

In the future we plan to engage with y’all sooner to ensure that our next game finds it’s audience. Our in-development prototype isn’t quite ready for external play – it’s still what we lovingly refer to as “technically a game”: there’s a way to win and lose, but it’s not fun yet. When we’re ready, we’d love to invite all of you to help us build our next title.

Jamie Stormbreaker – Game Director