In 2019, Rare stirred up excitement by announcing it was working on a new IP. Rare revealed a trailer for its fantasy action-adventure game Everwild, which enchanted fans. From the looks of things, Everwild takes place in a vibrant world where people called Eternals use magic to preserve the nature's balance and project animals from harm. That's a compelling concept, but Rare hasn't provided much insight on Everwild beyond that. The main news to come out of Everwild's development in recent months is that the game isn't progressing smoothly.
Everwild's creative director Simon Woodroffe left Rare in late 2020. While that in itself isn't disastrous, all signs indicate Rare has struggled to deal with it. The game's development was reportedly restarted from scratch in mid-2021, and new leaks claim Everwild is apparently a mess right now, with developers unsure where to take it next. Hopefully Rare perseveres and sees Everwild through, rather than abandoning the game before it sees the light of day. Rare has a long list of abandoned games, and it'd be a shame to see Everwild join them considering how much interest there is in this fantasy title.
Everwild's Risk of Abandonment
Many studios have had to cancel a game; all kinds of projects go awry or fail to find approval from publishers. Rare has had to cancel plenty of games in the past, even if many of its cancellations had nothing to do with the state of the games themselves. Many Rare projects didn't make it to release because Nintendo or Microsoft turned down Rare's ideas or asked the studio to rework the concept into something else, like how Dinosaur Planet went on to be Star Fox Adventures. Regardless of each cancellation's cause, Rare has a high number of abandoned projects, from a long-lost Perfect Dark sequel to a horror fantasy game called Urchin.
Rare may not always have control over its cancellations, but its long history of letting games go still doesn't bode well for Everwild. If Everwild really is struggling so much after more than two years in development, it seems likely Rare has at least considered canceling it by now. Sea of Thieves continues to thrive, after all, so Rare could focus on that game publicly while starting work on something new behind closed doors. Practical as that may be, canceling Everwild would be a huge loss.
Why Everwild Should Persevere
From the moment it was announced, Everwild had a community of fans. Rare may not have revealed gameplay for the action-adventure title, but the game's colorful art style and sound design struck a chord. Everwild developers have promised the game is unlike anything else in the industry, and based on the Eternals' druidic approach to magic, this promise doesn't seem unfounded. Everwild could be a refreshing addition to the Xbox Series X's game catalog, and to the action-adventure genre as a whole.
Even if it's unclear what Everwild's main objectives are, it already presents fans with a world that looks compelling to explore. Everwild features a wide variety of fantastical animals that the playable Eternals can interact with, and the spirits that Eternals sometimes call upon hint at a lore that Rare fans haven't seen as of yet. For the time being, there's hope that Rare still wants to make Everwild work. If Rare reportedly decided to reboot its development rather than scrap Everwild as soon as it hit a snag, that's a good sign. Everwild may be struggling now, but it could become something beautiful.
Everwild is in development for PC and Xbox Series X/S.