Terraria: Otherworld has officially been canceled. In a blog post just days ago, the team announced that after three years of troubled development, Terraria: Otherworld was still woefully behind in development. Due to what Re-Logic saw as a continuous uphill struggle to get the game finished, they declared that it would be easiest to cancel the project and put their focus elsewhere. While this is hugely disappointing news to millions of fans, it also leaves the question behind of just what went wrong, and why did it take so long to realize?

Terraria Otherworld did not look like an overly ambitious project, certainly not one that would take three years to develop. Re-Logic spent only five months crafting the original Terraria, and it was a much simpler game. Starting development in January 2011, the game launched in May 2011. While it did receive a large update in December – and has received updates continually since – the game was still out and available to the public months after Re-Logic began work on it. Otherworld – which looks like it uses many of the same assets and engine as Terraria – managed to take six times as long and didn’t even launch. All fans really have to go on for what Otherworld would have been is the video above, which doesn’t do much to explain why development took so long.

In April of last year, Re-Logic made a post detailing their disappointment with progress on Otherworld and the fact that they would be switching developers. Originally, Re-Logic was working with Engine Software, which was the same company that helped them to create Terraria. However, after two year of development, they announced they would be starting from scratch.

Full potential is an idea that Re-Logic throws around a lot, and in their recent post, they indicated they were scrapping Otherworld because it did not match their “clear vision for this game.” That could indicate a lot of things, but there is evidence that Engine Software did a fine job on Terraria. And when Re-Logic switched gears to have Pipeworks Studio take over, they said it was only after reviewing the work the team had done with mobile as well as “an amazingly on-point proposal.” Generally, if things start to fall apart at that point, it is often because management is too involved, and this is especially true of companies that get too big too quickly.

CD Projekt Red and Rovio both received huge influxes of cash following success and ballooned in size before crashing. Rovio had to close a London office after only a year of opening it, and CD Projekt Red famously lost reputation as well as numerous staff after trying to do too many projects at once. In the case of Re-Logic, it sounds like the story might have been much the same.

The visuals for Otherworld didn’t show it to be a technically complex game, and it looked to function in many ways like Terraria, but in both update posts, Re-Logic was quick to point out their own desire for perfection. Given that both studios Re-Logic used were more than capable of handling Terraria – Engine Software handling the PC launch and Pipeworks handling mobile – much of the blame should lie with Re-Logic, who sound like they may have suffered from wanting too much or changing their minds too often.

Whatever the outcome, Re-Logic is pushing ahead with ‘other projects’, so we do know that they were splitting their focus between Otherworld, Terraria, as well as future titles. The only hope is that whatever they do next they manage with a little more urgency and little less perfectionism. After all, they put out in amazing game in 5 months, and then failed to put out any game at all in 3 years, which says something about the way they are running things.