“i never fell out of love with it”
About 12 years ago, wedrew our breath in pain to reportthat Lone Survivor developer Jasper Byrne’s new “Zelda xDemon’s Souls” action-RPGwas no more. “It was too big for a single person to make,” Byrne wrote at the time. “This is the root of the problem. It wasn’t that I fell out of love with the idea, just that I can’t physically do it.” That was then and this, thankfully, is now. Byrne has tentatively returned to the project and begun sharing screens on social media.
I’m not sure when, exactly, Byrne decided to revive his action-RPG project - he’s beenposting WIP screens for years, perhaps more for the pleasure of sharing than as an indicator of progress - but inone of this week’s surprise Xitter updates, he says he rewrote the whole thing to run in Unity at some stage. He also took an extended break from development when Covid hit. “[It] feels so fresh after a nearly 5 year hiatus,” readsanother TwiXter post. “i never fell out of love with it but when covid started i got too much anxiety about it and made the call to hit pause. i only recently felt brave enough to try, so i’m seeing how it feels to work on again. let’s see what happens”.
And here’s one of the screens Byrne has shared this week. I really like the fog and how the choice of perspective works with the terrain textures.
Ina further update, Byrne says that he’s “written down the 8 milestones needed to get this thing out the door. nothing but the bare minimum, because 12 years is plenty enough already”. Fingers crossed it’s relatively smooth sailing from here. If you’d like to give him a hand, and you’ve yet to play Lone Survivor, you can finda remastered version on Steam.
