While we were expecting good news regarding Earthblade, a game in development at Extremely OK Games (EXOK) to whom we owe the wonderful Towerfall and Celeste, it is with a sad blog post that Maddy Thorson announces the pure and simple cancellation of this project.
Far from the context-free cancellations of major publishers, Maddy Thorson explains that a divide was created at the beginning of 2024. She bluntly reports that a disagreement concerning the intellectual property rights of Celeste appeared between the Maddy duo / Noel Berry and Pedro Medeiros, founding member of EXOK, but also incidentally artistic director of Earthblade and pixel/UI artist on Celeste and TowerFall. We won’t know more on the subject, but we know that Pedro is working on his own game, Neverway, and that obviously they all remain friends as before.
This departure, in addition to the fact that Earthblade was announced for the first time in April 2021 with a release planned for sometime in 2023, but that there was a first postponement for 2024, followed by a second for sometime in 2025 , necessarily did not help to continue the development of a project which became far too ambitious, and almost distressing in the face of the possible post-Celeste failure. A shame when you know what Celeste is talking about. Or precisely, a strength to realize that the task had become too important and that there is nothing more important than one’s physical and mental health.
-Moreover, Maddy Thorson declares that this decision is a relief for her, for Noel, but also even for Pedro.
The idea behind this clear and clear shutdown of Earthblade fortunately does not lead to the closure of the studio, nor even to stopping collaborating with other artists. According to Maddy Thorson, they want to refocus on more modest projects and rediscover the creativity they had during the Towerfall and Celeste eras. Suffice to say that we will not have any news for many months.
