Celeste creators’ next game Earthblade won’t be out this year, but studio assure development is “not stagnant”

“We had hoped to be announcing a firm release date around now, but it just isn’t in the cards”

The news came from lead creator and director Maddy Thorson in arecent blog update, which expressed that “we had hoped to be announcing a firm release date around now, but it just isn’t in the cards”.

Thorson made clear that, despite the delay, development on Earthblade is “not stagnant”, writing: “We are still making progress and we’re still excited to work on it.”

To help the studio with “identifying our vision” and clearing out some of the “problems preventing the game from living up to it”, indie developer - and TowerFall world champion - Kyle Pulver has joined the team as an additional game designer on the project.

Thorson explained that Pulver’s carefully-considered hiring came through a realisation that she had “become the bottleneck” on Earthblade’s development, struggling to manage the project’s workload and direction - something exacerbated by personal challenges, including her gender transition and related major surgery from which she is still recovering.

We’ve all had to fight through uncertainty together to make Earthblade,” Thorson wrote. “Even if we could go back and do everything “perfectly” from the start the result would be a different game. Despite the setbacks, we all still believe in this project, and more importantly in each other.”