Revenant Hill, the next game from the makers of Night in the Woods, has been cancelled. This is because the game’s narrative designer and artist Scott Benson is battling a serious illness that has forced him to step away from the project.
Benson revealed on his personal X account that he has been suffering from severe heart failure for the past 12 months, which has severely limited his ability to work. You can read his post below.
So over the last 12 months I’ve been very sick and it hasn’t gone away. I was eventually diagnosed with acute heart failure, most likely from a virus. This will continue to limit me greatly for the foreseeable future and thus I have had to stop working the way I once did.
– Here’s to your soul below (@bombsfall) November 7, 2023
The Glory Society, the studio that created Revenant Hill, post a Statement on Twitter (which is now the only image. Company website), explaining that Benson’s absence required the team to not only halt game development, but to suspend operations entirely. The indie studio was founded by Benson and his wife, Bethany Hockenberry, who also stepped away from the project to support him. The statement explained that with such a small team of employees, losing two key staff members was too much of a blow to continue operations as planned. The Glory Society statement reads in part,
Complicating anything presents challenges along the way. Games take a while to make and usually require a good team working together. We are lucky to have such a good team. Unfortunately, recent serious health issues have required two key members to step aside from the project indefinitely. We are a small team and we each wear more than one hat. This is a disadvantage of the difficulty of changing caps in an environment where all caps are required. Given the busy schedule, budget, and realities of reworking the entire project within these parameters, the team has decided to gracefully suspend operations. For all intents and purposes, this is the end of Revenant Hill’s development.
Benson is best known as the writer and artist/animator of 2017’s critically acclaimed Night in the Woods, which he created with co-writer Hockenberry and the late designer Alec Holuka. Following the success of The Game, he and Hockenberry formed The Glory Society in 2019 with musician/artist Wren Farren. Revenant Hill, the studio’s first project, was revealed during the PlayStation Showcase in May. Set in 1919, it stars a cat named Twigs who, after his barn burns down, is forced to take up residence in a log near a cemetery. Unfortunately, an owl starts demanding that Twigs pay the rent and the game focuses on Cat doing odd jobs to make ends meet. You can read part of the game. Playstation Blog Summary below
Grow crops to sell in the secret market or use for your own purposes. Put the roots down. Run through fields and trees. Watch the seasons go by. Make friends who become neighbors who become family. They also make enemies. It is sometimes unavoidable. Find out what ghosts want. Host increasingly ambitious parties for witches and demons and other things that don’t have proper names. Immerse yourself in a world in the midst of violent change. Create a community by accident. Square dancing with a possum. Eat mice.
Revenant Hill was developed for PlayStation consoles and PC and had no release window. While it’s unfortunate that Twiggs’ adventure may never see the light of day, Benson’s health is infinitely more important and we Sports Informer Wishing him a speedy road to recovery.