Indie city heist sim Subversion shelved

Subversion, the game once touted as Darwinia developer Introversion's magnum opus, has been put on hold - indefinitely.

The news was broken to fans gently, with a post on the Introversion Forums revealing the studio had submitted a previously unrevealed game to the 2011 Independent Games Festival instead of the expected playable Subversion build.

Introversion's Chris Delay said the project had run up against a brick wall when the team finally admitted they'd devoted too many resources to the game's technology and not enough thought to its gameplay.

"We’d ended up with a game that looked and sounded brilliant, classic Introversion with its blue wireframe and sinister faceless characters. But there was a massive gaping hole where you would normally see a 'core game'. We’d tried and tried to fill that hole with ambitious tech and experimental systems, but you couldn’t escape it," he said.

"We’ve made the fatal mistake of having more fun making the game than gamers would ever have playing it."

Delay assured readers the game has not been cancelled, but urged us to "forget about it for now".

"We will be going back to that project eventually, but the first thing I plan to do is gut the thing from top to bottom of all the tech fluff that we forced in over the years. Without a core game it’s all a worthless distraction, and I will NEVER again spend so long making tech for a game without having a solid core game in place first. Subversion needs a total rethink from top to bottom, and some long standing sacred cows need slaughtering."

Subversion, a procedurally generated heist simulator with vague links to Introversion's classic Uplink, has been on the cards since at least early 2008, but saw its first proper reveal in early 2010.

In addition to debut title Uplink and Darwinia, Introversion is behind DEFCON and Multiwinia.

Thanks, Blue.