A little over three years since it was announced, Dreamsettler, the spiritual sequel to Hypnospace Outlaw, has been cancelled. Yesterday, lead developer Jay Tholen shared a video simply titled “Dreamsettler is canceled”, where he explained some of his reasoning behind the decision. “This is not a joke, and I’m sorry everyone,” Tholen wrote in the description of the video.
After noting that he “didn’t want to make a video like this,” the developer went on to explain that Dreamsettler is cancelled, going on to say that this means “it’s not coming out, it won’t be finished. This was a mutual decision between the publisher and I. They didn’t pull support or anything, and they tried what they could to keep it going, but it’s just time to stop it.”
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He also noted how it was bad timing given that a Patreon to help keep the project going was only launched earlier this year. There are also plans to try to release the part of the game that do exist, including the soundtrack from returning composer The Chowder Man, in some shape or form.
In a short version of events, Tholan explained that with Dreamsettler, they had a budget this time, so “we tried to plan the game from the top down more or less, where we knew all the beats that would happen, and what expensive things we could afford to film or have made for the game, and how much money we could afford to pay a programmer for X amount of time.” In turn, there was a specific schedule to follow, and Tholen noted he has “never successfully made a game based on a design document.”
He later said that he thinks he’s a “hard person to work with. On a normal team, where there wasn’t some guy who needed to work a weird way, they would have finished this game, and it would have been great, but I just couldn’t get it going, you know? And it’s too late. Hopefully you all stick around, and don’t hate my guts, and hopefully we’ll talk soon.”
In the years since announcing Dreamsettlers, Tholen did also work on Slayer X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengeance of the Slayer, a boomer shooter spin-off made by the in-world Hypnospace Outlaw character Zane – former RPS staffer Liam reviewed it and had some positive but mixed feelings on it. Co-founder John Walker reviewed Hypnospace Outlaw back in the day too, coming away from it quite enamoured.
