When Basement Crawl was first revealed for the PlayStation 4, it appeared as though it would be a fun Bomberman-esque clone. However, the game debuted to poor reviews (it’s at 27 on Metacritic), prompting the developer, Bloober, to explain that some of the issues with Basement Crawl “emerged only after the game went public.” Bloober then added, “We have received and continue to receive great feedback from players that has helped us identify the issues and we will be fixing as fast as possible.”
As part of a new interview with GameSpot, Bloober’s Marc Colhoun apologized to everyone who purchased the game by saying, “Firstly, I think that I should start this off by apologizing to those of you who bought Basement Crawl and have been waiting for us to fix it. The game was a mess for both you and us.”
He then continued by explaining how they won’t just be releasing a patch to fix Basement Crawl’s issues, but they’re rebuilding the game from scratch also:
Usually, what you will see at this point is a lot of marketing talk and maybe a patch. Rather than accepting defeat on this and issuing a patch that kinda fixes this or kinda improves that, we have decided to just come out and explain to you where we are right now and what we plan to do. We have been rebuilding the game, completely from scratch and on a new engine.
I know that this isn’t really the way things are usually done in the industry, but I think that if you have put a bad product out to people it is your job to do what you can to fix that. Even if it means going back to the drawing board on a game that has already been released.
Colhoun adds that the rebuilt version is “just a way for us to regain the trust of gamers.” As well, “We will be giving this game for free to people who bought the original game. This is our priority, to ensure that we give you what you expected from us. To do this we are getting in touch with as many people as we can that bought the game to get feedback and help ensure that you guys are just as much part of the process as we are.”
You can expect the new version of Basement Crawl to fix technical issues, add a tutorial, improve AI, and add more game types.
A release date for this new version of Basement Crawl, or the patch for the existing version of Basement Crawl, wasn’t announced.
