Nightdive Studios, the U.S. outfit aiming to bring back “lost and forgotten gaming treasures,” has placed its highly anticipated System Shock remake on hold.
The crowdfunded reimagining was pitched as a faithful reboot of the 1994 classic, and pulled in $1.35 million in funding from over 21,000 backers when it landed on Kickstarter in the summer of 2016.
Now, close to two years the later, the project has been placed on hold by the studio, with company CEO Stephen Kick suggesting the dev team needs time to refocus and reassess.
“Maybe we were too successful. Maybe we lost our focus,” wrote Kick in the most recent Kickstarter update. “The vision began to change. We moved from a remaster to a completely new game.
“We shifted engines from Unity to Unreal, a choice that we don’t regret and one that has worked out for us. With the switch we began envisioning doing more, but straying from the core concepts of the original title.”
Ultimately, it sounds like Nightdive bit off more than it could chew, and despite moving forward with the best intentions, wound up creating a monster of a project that far exceeded its own capabilities.
“As the budget grew, we began a long series of conversations with potential publishing partners. The more that we worked on the game, the more that we wanted to do, and the further we got from the original concepts that made System Shock so great,” adds Kick.
“I let things get out of control. I can tell you that I did it for all the right reasons, that I was totally committed to making a great game, but it has become clear to me that we took the wrong path, that we turned our backs on the very people who made this possible, our Kickstarter backers.”
Despite the sudden hiatus, Kick has assured backers that the team is only taking a break, and not abandoning the project completely. He’s promised they’ll be back in the studio soon enough, and that the title will see the light of day.