After ordering its dungeon crawler back to the drawing board a mere two weeks ago, Techland has reiterated that Hellraid hasn’t been cancelled, and the studio may retrieve the new IP as soon as fall 2015.
News comes via Eurogamer, who recently spoke with Techland CEO Pawel Marchewka regarding the revamped first-person title, the potential future of Call of Juarez, and Dying Light, which recently surpassed a new milestone. Perhaps more so then most, Techland’s acclaimed zombie title Dying Light underlines the important of releasing video games at the right time. Launching back in January with little-to-no competition, the open-world parkour experience sold remarkably well and recently eclipsed 4.5 million users, up from 3.2 million less than two months ago.
However, when asked about the status of Hellraid, Marchewka ensured that the game has simply been placed on a shelf while the development team doubles down on Dying Light.
“No no no. Right now we want to concentrate on Dying Light. We wanted to be fair with the fans so we wanted to send a clear message, especially as a lot of the people were expecting new things coming from Hellraid at E3 and Gamescom. We decided to take the pressure away.
“Once we deliver everything we want [for Dying Light], probably by the – I don’t know – end of the third quarter this year, we will then maybe start to send some new [Hellraid] materials or informations or thinking about what’s the release date, something like that. There is nothing concrete about this timing. But putting on hold means we want some of the resources to concentrate on Dying Light, and once they do what needs to be done we will come back to Hellraid.”
Interestingly, it seems as though the breakout success has spawned talk of a potential Dying Light 2. Should a sequel ever arise, it’ll be a while yet before Techland details its plans for the next iteration, but the fact that a follow-up is on the cards is certainly exciting. As for Call of Juarez, the studio still holds the rights to the IP, and Marchewka refused to rule out another chapter in the western series.
“We co-own the IP with Ubisoft, so we are joined together,” Marchewka said. “We have to decide together when will be the best time to maybe produce another version of Gunslinger. Probably we will stay with the style of the last one.
Hellraid will likely remain behind closed doors for some time yet before Techland is ready to re-reveal its new-fangled take on the first-person dungeon crawler. Until then, you can share your thoughts about the overhaul down below.
