LogInBIONICLE: Masks of Power is a fan-made open-world action-adventure game set in the BIONICLE universe, which we've covered a few times in the past few years. Recently, its developer, Team Kanohi, announced disheartening news that after eight years of development, the project has to be shut down completely per the Lego Group's request. This happens only three months before the demo is released.
The developers expressed their disappointment in a statement on Steam. The team speculated that LEGO might have requested the shutdown due to concerns that "our project was too easy to mistake for an official product." Although the company had previously endorsed fan-made projects, their "stance on fan-created media has changed."
The team had a plan to shadow drop the demo in August, which won't happen due to the sudden change of situation. Still, they post a 2-hour video to showcase what the demo would offer:
Although the development was forced to come to an end, the development team won't let their past effort go down the drain.
"Our plan is to take everything we’ve learned through creating Masks of Power and use that knowledge and experience as the foundation of a brand-new, original game. Currently codenamed Project Rustbound, our team has already begun brainstorming concepts for a new, original world that we get the chance to build ourselves. We can’t wait to take everything that we’ve learned through working on this game and use it to make something entirely our own," reads the announcement.
Meanwhile, to embark on a new journey, the team has been renamed to Unmasked Games, remaining as a fully-fledged independent game studio. Now that BIONICLE: Masks of Power has become past tense, its Steam page has now shown Project Rustbound as the title, accompanied by updated preview images.
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