Ninety percent positive. Three people playing. That’s the scoreboard for Neophyte, a mini top-down action roguelike from developer Regal Pigeon that players genuinely liked — right up until the developer disappeared.

Steam shows 440 reviews, 398 of them positive, good enough for a “Very Positive” rating. The top two reviews on the store page both say the same thing: “abandonware.” One player with over 11 hours logged wrote that the game “used to be pretty awesome unique and stylized” but no longer even functions. Another with 4.2 hours played said they were active in the game’s Discord, where the developer “seemed responsive and quite active” before going silent. “Makes me wonder what happened to them, nothing bad I hope.”

What happened is a question without an answer. Regal Pigeon’s last update — version 0.5.00, dubbed the “Evolution Update” — landed on February 18, 2024. That’s over two years ago. The game remains in Early Access. The development log on itch.io, where Neophyte also sells for $2.99 with a 4.7-star rating from 66 reviews, shows a steady cadence of patches through 2023 and into early 2024. Then nothing.

The itch.io page identifies Regal Pigeon as part of Quarterly Made Games, a Hong Kong-based collective that described its approach as “low stakes, low pressure” and focused on motivating members with shared deadlines. Neophyte, apparently, was neither low stakes nor finished. Built with GameMaker, it offered chaotic spell-slinging combat with perk synergies — the kind of tight loop that earns devoted fans. The fans showed up. The developer didn’t.

At three bucks, this should be an easy recommendation. Instead it’s a case study in solo indie development’s sustainability problem. You can build something players genuinely enjoy, price it within impulse-buy range, earn glowing reviews across two platforms — and still watch it die because one person, somewhere, stopped logging on.

Three concurrent players. A game this liked deserves better.

Sources