We cleared the schedule

Until this week our site listed five games after Sudoku Haven, each with a "coming" date. Those dates are gone, and so are the pages.

What changed

Crossword Nook, Solitaire Compendium, Skein, Starfall Sentinels, and Traffic Dodgers are off the schedule. Some of them are cancelled. Some are in a drawer with a label on it. None of them has a release date, so we took them off the site instead of leaving up five promises we don't plan to keep.

We want to put the whole studio behind something really big and special, and a list of six games left no room for it. More news on that is coming soon.

Sudoku Haven stays

Nothing changes for Sudoku Haven. Four new puzzles arrive every morning, the archive keeps the ones you missed, and we keep working on it.

What we're making instead

One game, and it is far larger than anything on the old list. We expect it to hold more than a hundred hours of play. It has taken over the office.

We can't tell you the name yet. We can tell you some of what is in it. There is a tower, and it goes up one floor at a time. There are visitors who keep taking the stairs without an invitation.

The tower is only where it starts. There is a long story, and it does not stay indoors. There are towns that would prefer to be left alone and won't be. There are invasions, and at least one of them is yours. There are wars. There is a crown that never sits straight, and there is someone under it who has opinions about all of the above.

When, and on what

We'll announce the game properly soon, with its name and a first real look. That announcement won't come with a release date. Our honest estimate is one to two years of work left, and we'd sooner report how it's going than guess a day and miss it. A Steam page will go up well before the game does.

It is being built for Mac and Windows first. We want it on Apple TV and on phones and tablets too, and we'll try. It only ships there if it plays as well as it does on a desk.

It's big enough that a few corners of it could become small games of their own. That comes later, and only after the big one is done.

One more thing in the works

There is a second project behind the scenes: a multiplayer social deduction game. It's early, and there is nothing to announce. We're telling you now so that it isn't a surprise later, which is a strange thing to say about a game where everyone lies to each other.

If you were waiting for one of the five

If you joined the waitlist because of one of the cancelled games, we're sorry. You're still on the studio list, and you'll hear about the new game when there is something to show. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and we won't take it personally. The emu might.

The schedule is short now. We like it better that way.