Night in the Woods spiritual successor Revenant Hill has effectively been cancelled by The Glory Society, with multiple factors contributing to the end of development. Per a statement released on Twitter / X, two team members, including studio co-creator Scott Benson, had been forced to step away from the game recently due to serious health issues, with subsequent impacts on scheduling, budgets, and overall work on the project.
As The Glory Society is a small collective of developers, these challenges were too difficult to surmount – and so, the team has elected to suspend all operations indefinitely.
“Games take a while to make and usually require a good team working together,” the team said. “We’ve been lucky to have one such good team. Unfortunately, recent serious health issues have necessitated two key members stepping away from the project indefinitely.”
“We are a small team and we each wear multiple hats. Given the realities of schedules, budgets, and the fraught task of reworking the whole project within those parameters, the team has amicably decided to suspend operations. For all intents and purposes, this is the end of the development of Revenant Hill.”
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“We are a cooperative and we make decisions as a group. For us, this was the clear path to take for the well-being of the team, which is frankly more important than games. In the future, after the dust has settled, perhaps we’ll talk about what we’ve made and learned together. In the meantime, we want to thank everyone who worked with us, supported us, and believed in us.”
As publicly announced in early 2023, Revenant Hill was set to be a spiritual successor and prequel to Night in the Woods, with the action following a cat named Twigs as they explored the strange town of Revenant Hill, and made ends meet against a backdrop of 1920s-era depression.
Per IGN, the game had been in development for four years.
Here’s its official description, courtesy of its still-live Steam page:
“The year is 1919. After the barn he was living in burns down, Twigs the cat takes up residence in a wet log near an abandoned graveyard. When the owl from the next hill over starts demanding rent, Twigs must find a way to make ends meet, and things just get more complicated from there.
Grow crops to sell at the secret market or use for your own purposes. Put down roots. Run through the fields and the trees. Watch the seasons pass. Make friends who become neighbors who become family. Also make enemies. That’s unavoidable sometimes. Figure out what the ghosts want. Host increasingly ambitious parties for witches and demons and other things that don’t have proper names. Get tangled up in a world in the midst of violent change. Build a community by accident. Square dance with a possum. Eat mice.”
For now, it appears the vision behind Revenant Hill will not be realised.
