Housemarque, developer of Resogun and Nex Machina, announced the news in a post celebrating its 25th anniversary that it is suspending all projects, including the Stormdivers battle royale, to focus all its efforts on mystery games.

"We are now focused on delivering our biggest and most ambitious game ever," CEO Ilari Kuittinen said in an update. The unnamed game apparently marks a new phase for the studio and defines its "next evolution." Housemarque is not yet ready to announce it, however, but apparently its publishing partner will soon.

This is not the first major change for Housemarque, which spent more than two decades designing great arcade games before announcing in 2017 that the genre was over; its last arcade game on PC was created by It was "Nex Machina," a super-fast twin-stick shooter created in collaboration with Eugene Jarvis. Chris Schilling gave it an 89 in our "Nex Machina" review, but I foolishly tempted fate at RPS by saying that if time stood still and there was only "Nex Machina" left, it wouldn't be so terrible. My fault. My apologies.

Housemark would later release another arcade game for the PS4, a side-scrolling shooter called Matterfall, but then switched gears dramatically. With the arcade game behind them, Housemarque began work on the sci-fi battle royale game "Stormdivers". Now the game has been forced to stop development. It is unclear when it will be resurrected. [But I am eager to see what they do next, anything that will free us from the battle royale.