There are times where games get canceled and you think that this had happened years ago. I feel this way about Wild, a game by esteemed creator Michel Ancel and his indie dev studio Wild Sheep, that was first announced during PlayStation’s Gamescom conference all the way back in 2014 (a year after one of my favorite Gamescom moments – courtesy of Giant Bomb). That was seven years ago, and since then, we have heard little from the game or the team behind it, aside from the usual “we’re working on it” spiel. Now, it seems that Michel Ancel’s Wild has been canceled, according to an industry insider.
Ancel, who is perhaps best known for creating the Rayman series, including serving as creative director for the most recent 2D games in the series (Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends – games which I personally consider to be amazing platformers, and some of the best in the modern age) is a bit of a living legend. He also created the Beyond Good & Evil series and was heavily involved with the development of Beyond Good and Evil 2, a game that many considered to be in development hell before it was remarkably re-announced during Ubisoft’s E3 2017 conference. However, in September 2020, Ancel announced that he would be retiring from the video games industry, and instead focusing his efforts on running a wildlife sanctuary, which given the whole nature theme of Wild, maybe that was on the cards for a while.
The information comes courtesy of industry insider Jeff Grubb, who said in a video on Giant Bomb (premium content):
“I think Michel Ancel abandoned the project… he’s not working on it anymore, the project got shut down. The team that was working on it was looking at maybe trying to stay together and work on other projects.
“I don’t know what happened with that, but they were like, ‘we’re not working on [Wild] anymore, but we do have a lot of talent here, so maybe we can work on some stuff’.”
The sound I make when Wild is dead. pic.twitter.com/9ugkqy3wBj
— Jeff Grubb (@JeffGrubb) August 20, 2021
