Romero Games has signed with a new publisher to finish a shooter built from the remains of the project Xbox canceled last year. The catch is size. The studio once had 110 people on the game, and it now has a team of around 15 to 16.
Co-founder John Romero shared the update in an interview with VGC. He runs the studio alongside his wife, veteran designer Brenda Romero. He did not name the publisher or give a date for the reveal, saying he “can’t say anything about who it is, or when the announce is, or any of that stuff.”
How Romero Games lost its funding
Romero described the cancellation bluntly. “Last year we basically got defunded, like a lot of people did,” he told VGC. The studio kept staff on while it searched for money to complete the original game. However, as people left over time, the team could no longer build the project it had planned.
At its lowest point, the headcount dropped to five people. Still, Romero Games kept full ownership of everything it had made. “We own the name, we own all the IP, all the art, all the graphics, the code and everything,” Romero said.
That ownership shaped the next step. Romero said he “needed to basically design a new game that could use as much of that stuff as possible, to just basically get a head start.” He then contacted someone he knew, and the two sides struck a publishing deal.
A redesign built on old work
The original version of the shooter will not ship. Romero said the studio cannot finish it “because it’s a 110-person game.” Instead, Romero Games is making a complete redesign that reuses much of the earlier art, code and design work.
The genre stays the same. Romero confirmed the new project is still a shooter, but said “everything else around it is really new.” He added that the game is scoped for the current team size and that development is going well.
Romero also spoke in favor of working small. “I love small teams, and it’s way more fun making games on small teams,” he said. A small group, he explained, can change direction within hours if it has to.
A publisher with no creative demands
According to Romero, the terms of the new deal differ from typical arrangements. Publishers often steer a game toward what they think will sell, based on their own specialization. By contrast, he said the current partner has “zero creative goals for this game.”
He summed up the publisher’s position as “you make what you want, we’re publishing it, we’re not going to tell you what to make,” and called it “the perfect deal.”
Romero’s career covers both ends of the team-size scale. His early hits, including Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, came from small teams at id Software, and his 2019 Doom episode Sigil was a solo project. Meanwhile, Daikatana had the biggest team and budget he ever worked with. It became his most divisive release.
Romero Games has not announced the new shooter’s name or its publisher, and Romero gave no timeline for the reveal.