Master Of Earth has been canceled. Here’s why.
We spent about three years working on a game called Master of Earth. It was a big, ambitious (and somewhat pretentious) project, aiming to be the ‘next big thing’ for our company. Now, it’s canceled. What happened?
The game’s development began in 2020 after a small internal game jam called the ‘Startreming Game Jam.’ A level/game designer and a programmer developed it over a week, and needless to say, it won the competition. The first version was actually quite good.
Master of Earth, or MoE for short, started as a puzzle game. It was meant to be similar to Portal but with a fantasy style and level design reminiscent of Portal’s ‘chambers.’ As the project progressed, the team grew, and so did the scope. The desire to create something ‘big’ or AA became stronger.
From the beginning, the game suffered from misdirection and poor management. Development started when Startreming wasn’t even a company, and the leaders weren’t working full-time. Some money was invested to hire a part-time senior developer, but it wasn’t enough. This developer ended up taking on multiple roles: level designer, game designer, programmer, and sometimes artist.
After months, everything was a mess. The solution? Adding more people, which only expanded the scope even further. The game evolved into an action-adventure title featuring bosses and up to six huge levels — insane.
As expected, the game entered development hell (officially acknowledged internally with a document explaining why) and then emerged after a few months. But the core remained a disaster. The game’s architecture made no sense. At one point, a pixel-art filter was even considered to fix the inconsistent art style.
Then 2022 arrived. Master of Earth was presented at EVA (Exposición de Videojuegos Argentina) — sort of an Argentinian Gamescom — and received some positive feedback from the audience. However, the game had numerous design issues, the art style was a mess, and the B2B meetings went terribly.
After that, development was halted. Nothing progressed after some key decisions were made. The development team, which once numbered 15 people, started shrinking until there was no one left. In most of 2023, the game didn’t receive a single update.
In October 2023, there was a last attempt to revive the project with a small team of four interns. It was a hit or miss, as the main team didn’t support the interns, and they eventually drowned in the messy codebase. After four months, the internship ended, and the project was paused once again.
So, if the game’s standards weren’t good enough, why was the cancellation delayed for so long?
It’s incredibly hard to cancel such a significant project where money, effort, and time were invested over about three years. Especially for a small company, taking responsibility for such a failure is challenging.
What did we learn? First, scope. Then, consolidate a team. Stick to the game idea. Believe in it. Trust your team. Don’t change it mid-development.
What’s next for Startreming Games? We’re getting there.
