Two years ago, Campo Santo, the developer behind Firewatch revealed their next game, In the Valley of Gods. The game premiered at The Game Awards and had everyone talking about it, with a release set for the end of 2019.
From the Steam page:
Explore a remote and ancient valley in the Egyptian desert, uncovering treasure and treachery in pursuit of a discovery that could bring you fame and fortune—or leave you for dead, buried beneath the sands.
In 2018, Valve picked up Campo Santo as a first-party developer for the PC giant. Then, things went quiet and not a peep was made until recently when developers previously working on the title, removed mention of In the Valley of Gods from their social media profiles. This led to speculation.
As it were, Valve eventually revealed their first game in years: Half-Life: Alyx, a new game set and midquel within the universe and a VR-only title set for next year. Eventually, news got out that Campo Santo was working on development for this game.
Today, Jake Rodkin confirms to Polygon that In the Valley of Gods is shelved indefinitely. In a statement, Rodkin confirms that his team is hard at work on Half-Life: Alyx, Dota Underlords and other projects within Valve.
“To fans looking forward to In the Valley of Gods, it’s probably clear that the optimistic “2019” at the end of the announcement trailer isn’t going to be accurate. In the end, Valve Time makes fools of us all. But yes, developers from the former Campo Santo team have joined other projects at Valve, including Half-Life: Alyx. As you can imagine, our experience in the first-person adventure genre is pretty relevant. You hear a lot about how at Valve you can work on what you want. It turns out that’s true, and there’s a lot of work available. As we integrated ourselves into Valve it became clear there was a lot of valuable work to be done on Half-Life: Alyx. Some of us starting lending a hand, and have since become full-time on the project as it approaches launch. Similarly, some ex-Campos are working on Dota Underlords, some are on Steam, and so on. So to answer your question as of today, In the Valley of Gods’ development is on hold—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.”
Right now with the focus on next year’s Half-Life title being all hands-on deck, I’m hopeful post-launch we’ll hear that the studio plans on jumping back into development.
