Quoting from their discord announcement:
@everyone to all our Espire fans, we are sorry to let you know that Lode (developer of the Espire games) is unfortunately in a position where we need to further downsize. We know the timing of this is just terrible. We have held out as long as we could but have had to make this decision now to ensure we can pay out all employee redundancy entitlements and debtors. We will be doing all we can to support the talented team in finding future roles.
We hope things can turn around for LODE, but for now, our games will still be supported in maintenance-only without new content for the forseeable future.
I think their games are great, I’d encourage everyone who’s interested in stealth to check out Espire 1 and Espire 2.
The games actually look pretty badass! Somehow I have never heard of them. Perhaps it’s the marketing dept that should be let go?
Edit: Also available on Pico!!
Some of the trailers are really great. I definitely heard more about Espire 1 during Quest 1 early Q2 days than about Espire 2. The game itself has some interesting mechanics, they also released a mixed reality mode.
If you’re on Quest, you can always use the meta-dog website to get a random referral-discount and return it if you haven’t played more than 2h.
Definitely worth checking out imo.
Bought Espire 2 recently and was really impressed. The mechanics like the repair tool in your arm, the tranquilizer dart launcher and holding your hand to your mouth to actually tell enemies to drop their weapons were a nice surprise. Definitely not a run of the mill game can’t wait to dive back in.
Too bad. Makes me wonder how any app lab games can survive if main store titles are failing. It’s just not like the early days where there were so few titles, almost anything would sell.
