Animal Crossing Gamers Devastated As Spiritual Successor Abruptly Cancelled

Ubisoft’s in-development Animal Crossing-inspired cosy game has apparently been cancelled, a new report states.

Earlier this year, it was reported that six games that were still in development at Ubisoft were cancelled, and it seems like another game has now met the same fate.

As reported by Insider Gaming, Ubisoft Montreal has now cancelled Alterra, the Animal Crossing-inspired game it was working on.

The news was apparently broken to staff on Tuesday, when they were sent home for the day. No layoffs have been announced, with staff being moved onto other projects. However, it’s unclear what this means for support studios that were also working on the game.

In a statement to IGN, Ubisoft stated that “As part of our portfolio management approach and evolving creative house-led model, we continuously assess projects at every stage of development to ensure alignment with our strategic priorities, quality ambitions, and long-term market potential. Projects that no longer meet these expectations may be discontinued.”

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Alterra Was Going To Be A AAA Cosy Life Simulator Like Animal Crossing

First revealed in 2024, Alterra was going to be a social life sim game similar to Animal Crossing, and certainly inspired by the Nintendo game.

However, unlike that game, it apparently featured a voxel art style and mechanics similar to Minecraft, with players being able to collect materials and build items and structures of whatever they wanted to.

NPCs in the game were apparently called Matterlings, which resembled Funko Pop characters, and the world consisted of different biomes which housed unique creatures, materials, and items.

As Insider Gaming notes, Ubisoft Montreal had been developing Alterra for almost three years before its cancellation. It was apparently being led by creative director Patrick Redding and lead producer Fabien Lhéraud.

The news follows reports of several other shutdowns by Ubisoft from earlier in the year. Back in January, Ubisoft allegedly cancelled six games, which included the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake and a live-service Assassin’s Creed multiplayer game.

It also delayed several more, such as Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced and the Splinter Cell remake.

Later, in March, Ubisoft ended game development at Red Storm Entertainment, the developer behind several Tom Clancy video game franchises in the 2000s, including Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six.

It was co-founded by Clancy himself in the 1990s, who put his name on several of the developer’s most successful titles.

Red Storm’s last game was Assassin's Creed Nexus VR for the Meta Quest 2. At the time, it was also working on a Splinter Cell VR game and The Division: Heartland, which were both cancelled between 2022 and 2024.

For now, it seems like the AAA cosy game space has been largely untapped by big publishers. Animal Crossing and The Sims seem to be dominating the space, each hitting a slightly different audience, but there aren't really any others that have quite scratched the same itch for players.

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