Immortals of Aveum was one of those games that got swallowed by the unprecedented slew of triple-A releases that dominated gaming in 2023. A new IP from a new studio, the game didn’t fare well at launch, sandwiched as it was between behemoths like Diablo IV, Baldur’s Gate 3, Starfield, Armored Core 6, et cetera. This led to Ascendant Studios having to lay off around 45% of its employees just a few weeks after the debut of Immortals of Aveum.
However, the developers kept working on the game. Speaking to GamesIndustry, Ascendant Studios founder Bret Robbins said sales have improved lately, between the trial and the discounts. Robbins was also confident that the final word in the story of Immortals of Aveum hadn’t been written yet.
It was either: ‘It looks cool, I’ll play it when it’s on sale’ or ‘It looks cool, I’ll play it when I have time.’ And we’ve found that to be true. When we did go on sale in November, and when the huge breakout games started to quiet down a bit, suddenly we had five times the sales that we had earlier. And that’s a testament to the fact that people were now discovering it and had the time to play it. We are still here, we are still supporting it, the sales are picking up and I hope more and more people play and enjoy it. The story of Immortals of Aveum isn’t written yet. I was the creative director on Dead Space, and people were discovering that for years and years. I think Immortals will be the same.
A couple of weeks ago, a former employee of Ascendant claimed the game had cost $85 to develop. Robbins didn’t confirm the figure to GamesIndustry. Instead, he said:
For a big AAA game, our budget was pretty modest. We delivered an amazing 25-hour game that’s beautiful and plays really well, and was relatively bug-free, and at half the cost or less of a lot of these bigger games… certainly compared with the games I’ve worked on.
Ascendant Studios is already working on its next project after Immortals of Aveum, though it’ll likely be a few years before we hear any details.
