Pahdo Labs’ debut game Starlight Re:Volver sure looked like it had some hype ahead of its Early Access launch, but two months later, the indie developer has announced a new direction for the MMO-roguelite.
Starlight Re:Volver will be shifting away from its MMO ambition, and will now be developed as a co-op roguelite. The game will be retitled as Starlight Revolver: Ignite.
The current rendition of Starlight Re:Volver is that it has a MMO-style hub, complete with characters that acts as vendors and playable mini-games designed for social interaction. Think Destiny’s Tower.
The core game loop is a character-based roguelite, playable with up to 4 players. But the game is always-online, not free-to-play, has replayability by way of having to repeat roguelite runs to acquire materials for crafting and trading, and FOMO-inducing limited-time cosmetic and item drops.
However, player count for Starlight Re:Volver only reached three digits at its highest—on launch day at 499 concurrent players—as per SteamDB. Outside of events, the playerbase hovers in the double digits. Not exactly the numbers an MMO, or an MMO-lite, should be happy with. Servers for the South America region has recently be spinned down to consolidate the small playerbase (and likely save some cost on servers).
This pivot, of moving away from the MMO elements, is a response to the Starlight Re:Volver’s Early Access launch (it “
This pivot, of moving away from the MMO elements, is a response to the Starlight Re:Volver’s Early Access launch (it “did not go as we had hoped.”)
Pahdo Labs also revealed they have gone back to pre-production, so the pivot isn’t just a big update it’s basically starting from more or less scratch.
As a result, the developers have shrunk down to “a core team of 15 full-time developers” though many of the previously full-time developers and artists are still working on the game albeit only on a part-time or contract basis.
Starlight Re:Volver is still playable in its current form with no plans to shut it down for now.
Starlight Revolver: Ignite will be playable offline due to the shift away from MMO-style online hubs. Pahdo Labs intend to keep communicating with the community “in public, via monthly updates” on what’s to come.
Starlight Re:Volver is currently in Early Access on PC (Steam). It’s still worth checking out in its current guise if you love the bubbly anime-esque aesthetic it has got going for.