Kwalee Labs Shuts Down After Luna Abyss Release Leaving Indie Team Without Jobs Despite Positive Reviews
One more unfortunate indie game dev victim, Kwalee Labs, has been shut down. Their gravity horror action game Luna Abyss was just released on Steam, only 3.5 weeks ago. A team of nine was behind the game, and are now out of a job.
Kwalee Labs management team hasn't provided the public with the full reasons for the shutdown of the indie team; Holly Emery, leader of the indie development studio told our publication that
the studio shutdown was made entirely above the team and that they were only delivered a concluded decision without previous warnings.
Emery admitted that the game's development cycle wasn't without its problems, and she did want to thank the community for welcoming Luna Abyss to the game world with "open arms".
Luna Abyss is a first person shooter with platforming mechanics, environment horror, and bullet hell fast paced mechanics. Players are a prisoner sent to survey the wreckage of an empty colony on a lost moon. The game released at the same time to all PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S platforms, and is also available on Game Pass.
While the studio has shut down, the game has been well received critically, and generally player review scores for the game are a 6.5 and our reviewer gave it a 8 / 10 with a 81 / 100 on Metacritic, making for a real disappointment of where the game ended up, rather than where it deserved to be on the market.
