John Romero’s Canceled Shooter Is Still Canceled, but He’s Taking ‘Elements’ and Putting Them in a Brand New Game

Doom co-creator John Romero has revealed that while his previous shooter was canceled, “elements” of it live on in his latest secret project.

Romero Games, the studio founded by John and Brenda Romero, was left “heartbroken” this summer after Microsoft reportedly pulled funding of its next project as part of the company’s latest round of cuts and mass layoffs. The cuts also affected other internal Xbox studios, leading to the cancellation of the likes of Everwild and Perfect Dark, as well as other unannounced titles Microsoft had been funding.

Despite some reports, the studio did not close, and the Romeros assured fans they were “evaluating opportunities” from publishers that had been in touch since the funding issues were announced, but very little was known about the game other than it was a first-person shooter.

Now, in a new interview at Salón del Videojuego de Madrid (thanks, Eurogamer), John Romero revealed, to rapturous applause, that he had “survived the cancellation of a huge game.” And while his current project “has nothing to do with the previous game,” it “incorporates a lot of the elements that we had in the previous game.”

“We’re ahead — we’re not starting at ground zero,” he explained. “We have 50 million worth of a game. We can take pieces out and put [them] into a brand new indie game, so we have a lot of stuff to put in the game, and the design is completely different, but the team is really excited.

“It’s a very much smaller game,” he added. “It’s more fun for us because the people working on it were all directors of different departments, and they didn’t actually get to code or design or whatever — do it themselves — and so now we get to actually do that, do the thing that we’re really good at ourselves. That’s why small teams are great.”