Epic Games is shutting down Impossible Studios, the developer behind Infinity Blade: Dungeons. As a result, the game has been put on hold until publisher Epic figures out "the future of the project," a post on the Epic Games blog says.
Impossible Studios was formed around six months ago and was staffed by a group of ex-Big Huge Games developers. The last time we heard anything about Dungeons was back in October 2012 when Epic announced that it would delayed into 2013.
We've been chomping at the bit for Epic's Infinity Blade: Dungeons ever since it was announced at Apple's new iPad media event back in March, and based on the numbers from the upcoming game tracking built into the TouchArcade app [Free], all of you out there have been dying to get your hands on it as well.
Unfortunately, as AllThingsD has learned, Infinity Blade: Dungeons won't be hitting anytime this year, and an Epic representative won't go beyond just saying that the game will release sometime "in 2013", citing the difficulties of bringing a new development team, Impossible Studios, onto the project and the logistics of getting them up and running as reasons for the delays. Impossible Studios was formerly Epic Baltimore, which itself was initially made up of some former employees of 38 Studios after that company basically imploded earlier this year.
It's not just the logistics of bringing Impossible onto the project, but also the fact that the team has a ton of fresh ideas that they're trying to implement as well, so as much as it sucks waiting for something as highly-anticipated as Infinity Blade: Dungeons I'm confident that it will be a better game for it in the long run.
Did that positive pep talk help ease the pain? I didn't think so. I'm just as bummed as you are, but hang in there and we can get through this together. Make sure to check out our hands-on impressions of the game from E3, and of course get in on the discussion in our forums, and we'll let you know just as soon as we hear anything more about the release of Infinity Blade: Dungeons.
We love origin stories, and this one seems too awesome not to pass along. Infinity Blade: Dungeons wasn't always an Infinity Blade game. Early on, it was just a dungeon crawler set in a fantasy world. Created at a Game Jam after Epic Games proper finished Gears of War 3, it was only after an evaluation stage that it became the game we're anticipating right now.
Epic Games' director of production Rod Fergusson explains in a Game Informer video.
"The big thing to understand about Infinity Blade: Dungeons is it's not an evolution of Infinity Blade. It's not the next iteration of Infinity Blade. It's a different game."
"The way it came about was really a passion project inside the studio. It's what we did after we shipped Gears 3 is that we did a Game Jam in the studio where we let a bunch of people self-organize into teams and come up with a week of just working in the engine and see what fun things they could make," he says.
"I think it was about a group of seven guys came up with this idea of, like, 'let's do a dungeon crawler.' And they started building that up. After the week, we kind of reviewed all the different prospects. It sort of resonated within the company -- everyone really loves fantasy and you can tell by our art style that we actually love that hardcore fantasy stuff."
Why did Epic proper choose to move to dungeon crawler? It was "interesting" from a tech perspective, Fergusson says. And it's also a lot different from Gears of War game. Word on the street is that Epic has been making a lot of those since the beginning of this generation of consoles.
Pretty neat, right? Anyway, Dungeons is looking great and due out at some point this year. You can read more about it here.
Not to be lost amongst the craziness that has ensued with the ending of E3 last week – with a hectic travel schedule, a major California freeway being shut down for an entire day, and preparing for WWDC in San Francisco this week – I was able to spend some time with a demo version of Infinity Blade: Dungeons at Epic’s E3 booth. And I’ve got to say that it was probably my favorite iOS title at the entire show.
Epic announced Dungeons at GDC earlier this year, and released a pretty sweet trailer for the game last month. Just to refresh your memory in case you forgot, Infinity Blade Dungeons takes place in the Infinity Blade universe and is more of a Diablo-style hack ‘n slash RPG rather than a guided sword fighting game. Epic isn’t commenting on how the new game will intertwine with the original Infinity Blade games, but it sounds like it takes place many, many years before the events in Infinity Blade 1 & 2 and will likely set up the events in some way for those games.
Joystiq just posted a brand new gameplay video of the upcoming Infinity Blade Dungeons. If Diablo III has you itchin' for some similar dungeon crawling action on the iPad, you'll want to watch this video right now:
Also in the video is a curious looking blacksmithing mini game, and if you watch what seems to be a boss fight of some kind towards the end you'll notice what looks like a gesture-based attack to throw your weapon around. Unfortunately, no other details are available just yet, but I've got a good feeling about this. Something tells me if videos like this are dribbling out, we might be closer to a release than we may realize. (Or, at least, that's what I want to believe.)
Update:IGN has a brief hands-on and some screenshots:
Just like, well, most other Apple keynotes Epic revealed a new game in the Infinity Blade Saga. Details are remarkably vague, but we do know it's a dungeon crawler-y sort of game and it's "coming soon." If I were a betting man, I'd say that "soon" is going to be either on or before the launch of the third-gen iPad on the 16th.
Epic Games is shutting down Impossible Studios, the developer behind Infinity Blade: Dungeons. As a result, the game has been put on hold until publisher Epic figures out "the future of the project," a post on the Epic Games blog says.
We've been chomping at the bit for Epic's Infinity Blade: Dungeons ever since 
