Romero Games Was Working On A Canceled Xbox Exclusive For Over A Decade
Jack Coleman (He/Him) is a News Editor from Ireland. This is his third full year in games media, having previously worked freelance for various outlets, including DualShockers and NME.
Previously, he’s interviewed breakout indie developers, broken big news stories, reviewed massive releases and recounted his time living as a humble woodsman in Oblivion.
A lifelong gamer, Jack is primarily interested in RPGs and narrative experiences. He’s also been playing League of Legends for a decade, unfortunately.
I don’t think anyone would disagree that 2025 has been a poor year for Xbox Game Studios, despite the success of titles like Oblivion Remastered and The Outer Worlds 2.
The middle of this year saw mass layoffs at Xbox, the closure of a studio and the cancellation of several projects. One of these cancelled projects was in development at Romero Games, the studio of id Software co-founder and Doom creator John Romero. The existence of an Xbox-published project at Romero wasn’t public knowledge before its ultimate cancellation.
The sudden cancellation of the project brought Romero Games to the brink of shutting down, but a new publisher stepped in at the last minute to save the project. However, several core aspects of the game had to be reworked, possibly because of the specifics of the studio’s contract with Xbox.
Killing Demons Never Gets Old
According to Insider Gaming, the cancelled iteration of the project was called Hellslayer. In true Romero fashion, Hellslayer had you playing as a priest fighting the demons of Hell. It was a first-person shooter, with a quick restart mechanic similar to Hotline: Miami. The game had been in development for a decade at the Galway-based studio at the time of its cancellation.
If bringing godly justice to the evil denizens of Hell sounds exciting to you, too bad. Romero Games has switched focus to a new project that takes inspiration from the game that would’ve been called Hellslayer, but they’re still different games. In other words, Romero Games isn’t starting from scratch, but the studio isn’t close to finishing the new game, either.
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The identity of this angel publisher remains unknown, and it’s somewhat surprising that a backer was willing to step in to fund an entirely new project, given the state of the gaming industry. Still, John Romero remains a well-respected game developer, and his reputation was undoubtedly helpful in attracting investment from a new backer.
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Since being founded in 2015, Romero Games has released the mobster-themed tactical role-playing game Empire of Sin, and a couple of unofficial expansions for the original Doom (Sigil and Sigil 2).
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