The upcoming mobile game Shining Force: Heroes of Light and Darkness is canceled. The cancellation was announced at a recent Vespa stockholder’s meeting. Vespa is the Korean parent company of Japanese developer Hive. Hive initially planned to release the game globally within the first half of 2022. [Thanks, Gamecast!]
According to Korean media, the main reason for the cancellation involved issues with its development time and budget. Parent company Vespa has reportedly been in financial trouble for the past two years and is in danger of being delisted from the Korean stock market. Vespa will instead focus on releasing its existing mobile game projects, including the tower defense RPG Time Defenders and King’s Raid 2.
During the stockholder’s meeting, a Vespa representative stated, “The company is in a situation where it’s necessary to cut costs. We are currently working on multiple projects internally, and as Shining Force would require a longer development period and a significant budget, we decided to cancel development.”
The original Shining Force released on the Sega Genesis in 1992. Developer Hive announced that it arranged a deal with Sega to make a game with the series’ IP back in August 2021. At that point, development had already begun. A week later, Hive released a trailer featuring gameplay footage of the game. The trailer revealed that characters from previous installations of the series would appear.
Shining Force: Heroes of Light and Darkness would have appeared on mobile devices worldwide.
