Call of the Wild: Angler is No Longer Being Actively Developed

163

Call of the Wild: Angler has stopped being actively developed. The development stopped because the team at Avalanche Studios Group felt as though the game as a whole was too challenging, and that the title didn’t attract the player base needed to justify allocating more resources.

Reasons Behind the Sudden End to The Angler

The team at Avalanche Studios has said that the reasons behind stopping development were purely financial. Even though the game did have a dedicated player base, the team wanted to invest more in other projects. Although this means that there aren’t going to be any more updates released, existing functionality is going to remain. This means you can still play the multiplayer mode, which is one of the features that have helped to make the game so popular.

Although it’s disappointing that the game is no longer in development, it’s clear that the team at Avalanche tried to do something special with this game. They tried to break out and carve a new niche, which has been done before successfully across multiple game genres.

In Sims 4, fishing was added as an activity, and to catch more fish, you need to work on your skills tree. This helped to not only transform the fishing experience, but also made the sport as a whole more accessible to a bigger demographic. Another example of how fishing games have taken new approaches in the past would be Fishing Frenzy. This game has complex mechanics, but the interface and approach is simple. You spin the reels, which have symbols that range from buckets of chum to fish and lures. 

When you break down the data, it’s clear that the team wanted to create something new and interesting, rather than resorting to what traditional fishing games have done ten times over in the past. The unfortunate reality is that the game simply cost too much to maintain, given its complexity and real-world dynamics. 

Players Needed Ways to Elevate the Experience

One thing that makes Hunter COTW, so good is the fact that different biomes call for different approaches. The team wanted to implement things like this in The Angler, but as the game didn’t reach the same heights as COTW, this became almost impossible with the budget they had. It was also hard to add replayability to the game without features like this, which stalled the title and made it hard for people to come back to it time and time again.

The Angler was certainly a fun idea and it had so much potential as well. It would have been great to see new countries added, distinctive terrain and even navigational challenges, as we have in COTW. Adding an extra skills tree would also add hours of playability. With that said, things just didn’t work out, but that doesn’t mean that we might not see a resurgence in the future. It may be that The Angler is picked up again at a later date when the team are able to put more money into it. It may even be that another studio picks it up, which would certainly be interesting.