Campo Santo, the studio that brought us Firewatch, isn’t working on In the Valley of Gods anymore. According to studio co-founder Jake Rodkin, the first-person adventure game set in 1929’s Egypt is on an indefinite hiatus.
Rumors about the game’s cancelation begun swirling around the net last month, when key developers removed any mention of it from their Twitter bios. But now we have official confirmation that the game is “on hold.”
Rodkin told Polygon that after Valve bought the studio in 2018, the developers from Campo Santo have joined other projects at the company, such as Half-Life: Alyx and Dota Underlords.
Rodkin also stresses that In the Valley of Gods isn’t canceled. “In the Valley of Gods development is on hold,” he said, “but it certainly feels like a project people can and may return to. And when that happens, we’ll find an exciting way to let fans know.”
In the Valley of Gods was first announced in 2017, during The Game Awards of that year. Since then we haven’t heard a lot about it. However, the game still has a Steam page, where the release date is now listed as “TBD.”
Fans of VR and Half-Life should be pretty pleased with the news. Yes, we lost on a promising, narrative-focused adventure in the ruins of ancient Egypt, but Half-Life: Alyx gained the same experienced storytellers who wrote Firewatch and early Telltale Games.
But even as a lifelong Half-life fan, part of me would’ve preferred to see Campo Santo continuing to develop their own games, including a final version of In the Valley of Gods.
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