“Project Nova,” a first-person shooter in the Eve Online universe, is going back to the drawing board, CCP told its community in a blog post on Friday. That means the closed alpha planned for this game is not happening.
“Over the course of Project Nova’s development, we conducted a number of player research sessions with external partners, tirelessly playtested the game internally and brought community stalwarts in to help us evaluate the project,” the publisher wrote. “Now, after taking all this research and feedback into account, we see that the gameplay experience in its current form does not live up to our original vision and would not achieve our ambitious goals for this project.”
CCP didn’t give further detail as to what state the project itself is in, only that “Project Nova continues to evolve,” and the studio remains “committed to delivering a high-quality team-based shooter experience.” Also: “CCP is in no rush to release Project Nova until we’re satisfied it provides a rock-solid gameplay experience and visuals to match.”
Project Nova is CCP’s second try at integrating an FPS experience with Eve’s larger world of space combat, trade and political intrigue. The first was the PlayStation 3 exclusive Dust 514, which launched in 2013 and lasted three years before CCP shut it down. Project Nova was announced in the spring of 2016, right as 514 was being sunset. Most players found integration between Dust 514 and Eve Online difficult to the point of nonexistent.
Project Nova was first shown at Eve’s 2016 Fanfest and last year survived a company wide restructuring that reduced CCP to three studios from five.
