The Lego Group has forced an intrepid team of developers to shut down their impressive-looking Bionicle fan project, after eight years’ work.
Bionicle: Masks of Power was set to have been an open-world action RPG inspired by Horizon: Zero Dawn, featuring the fan-favourite masked warriors from Lego’s legendary toy series.
Successive trailers for the game had hyped up Bionicle fans for the release, and all looked fine from The Lego Group’s side — until, in the last month, something appears to have changed.
In a blog post confirming Bionicle: Masks of Power’s shock cancellation, its developers Team Kanohi said that they had recently been contacted by The Lego Group and told to shut down the project “in its entirety” and remove the game “from the public eye.”
The developers said they were not given any further specifics on the decision, but speculated that Bionicle: Masks of Power had grown to the point where it was now “too easy to mistake for an official product.”
A now-removed Steam page for the game was among the first search results for “Bionicle game,” and despite disclaimers that it was a fan project, its developers admit the whole thing may have been a victim of its own success — and beginning to look too legitimate.
Indeed, newly-published footage meant as a farewell to the project shows a relatively polished Unreal Engine-powered experience, featuring the Bionicle characters in a lush jungle world.
Could Lego finally be preparing its own Bionicle game now, and not want Masks of Power as competition? Or, perhaps, might Bionicle be set to appear within Lego’s deep integration within Fortnite, where players can make their own Lego games and worlds using Unreal Engine?
Whatever the reason, this looks to be the end for Bionicle: Masks of Power, though its development team has said it will rebrand and continue.
“Our plan is to take everything we’ve learned through creating Masks of Power and use that knowledge and experience as the foundation of a brand-new, original game,” the developers said.
“Currently codenamed Project Rustbound, our team has already begun brainstorming concepts for a new, original world that we get the chance to build ourselves.”
This will also come with a new name for Team Kanohi, as it leaves the masked Bionicle warriors behind. And that new name? Unmasked Games. After eight years and some promising progress, we’ll be keeping an eye out for what the team does next.
