Pokémon-like battler Moonrise won’t be seeing the light of commercial release, apparently.
Undead Labs announced today that after several months in early access testing on both PC and iOS, Moonrise wasn’t quite working out the way the studio had hoped and would need to be shelved.
“What we’ve found is that while some people really love Moonrise, there were unfortunately many more people who played the game and then moved on after a few days,” founder Jeff Strain wrote. “For a standalone, offline game that might be fine; but for an online game with significant server hosting costs and an expectation for ongoing development and new content, it can mean a game that not only doesn’t pay for it’s development costs, but might even cost money to operate.”
Undead Labs did leave the door open for the possibility of reusing elements of Moonrise in other products. In the meanwhile, the studio plans to leave the servers on until December 31st, release it worldwide on iOS within weeks, and patch in all sorts of goodies and unlocks for fans to enjoy.
