Welcome back to another roundup of MMOs that needed a solid check-up in our Whatever Happened To series!
Whatever happened to Spiral Knights?
I’m happy to report that Spiral Knights is still alive and kicking, and in fact, it just celebrated its 11th anniversary with a party in April. The cutesy sci-fi MMO isn’t getting tremendous levels of new content anymore, but Grey Havens is indeed still maintaining it as a free-to-play title on Steam.
Whatever happened to Arcfall?
We’d been watching old school-inspired indie MMO Arcfall since 2017; it was gunning for a 2020 launch, but it didn’t make it, and then it fell off our radar entirely. But apparently, its pre-alpha did receive development last year, including an update with flying mounts. As of November 2021, the developers had announced it was upgrading from Unity to Unreal Engine. This is not a small change.
“This gives better performance and allows further development of the combat system, moving to a action based combat system,” studio Neojac wrote. This change will take some time, during which the current version will still be live on Steam. The first demo using Unreal Engine will be released for closed testing to players who have purchased the 500 Arcfall coin pack or higher. When the new version of Arcfall goes live, all accounts will be wiped. Any Arcfall coin purchased and used will be returned, allowing players to purchase new items with the fresh start. More information about this major transition will be released in the upcoming weeks and months.”
Whatever happened to Antares Open World?
Antares Open World burst onto the scene back in 2019 as a hardcore SpatialOS “hybrid open-world MMO RPG agent simulation, based on a 4X strategy and survival player-driven sandbox concept,” though apparently it had been pitched years before that. Last year, the developer dropped two new videos touting the game’s procedural world and its AWS integration; apparently, SpatialOS has been discarded as well. The website is a bit of a mess of broken links, but there is a dev update from last November discussing Amazon Lumberyard, terraforming and terrain, and the potential for small-scale commissioned work from outside devs, so it does appear work continues.
Spot anything else we haven’t poked our noses into in a while? Drop us a tip!
