Techland's first-person dungeon crawler, Hellraid, has been sent back to the drawing board.

Techland, known for its work on the Dead Island, Dying Light and Call of Juarez franchises, has announced that it is stopping development on Hellraid, its first-person dark fantasy game. The studio has been working on Hellraid since 2012 and originally meant to release it two years ago. Unfortunately, this hack-and-slash game's development proved yet again that it wasn't ready to launch. As a result, Techland has decided to put its development on hold until further notice.

Here's Techland's official statement on Hellraid's current status:

Dear Hellraid fans,

We would like to officially announce that our dark fantasy FPP game Hellraid will not be released this year as previously planned, and the development of the game has been put on hold.

In the recent months we conducted an internal analysis and came to the conclusion that Hellraid, in its current shape and form, is not meeting our own expectations for this project. Therefore, we decided the best course of action would be to send it back to the drawing board and invent our dark fantasy title anew.

In the meantime, we will consolidate our development resources and focus on further expansion of our Dying Light franchise.

We wish to thank all our fans for your support – you’re the best!

As you can see, Techland wants to focus on its more zombie-oriented franchises. It's a shame too, because Hellraid was supposed to act as a spiritual successor to games like Hexen and Witchhaven, which we certainly would have enjoyed. Nevertheless, we're glad to hear Techland is taking the high route instead of shipping out a game they felt didn't meet their expectations. Techland's next game, Dead Island 2, has been delayed to a 2016 release.

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