One of the best Metroidvania-style games in recent memory is Shadow Complex on the Xbox Live Arcade. It was developed by Chair Entertainment and Epic Games, the latter of which is known for big shooters like Unreal Tournament and Gears of War. When Shadow Complex turned out to be a major success — it set a sales record in its first week — fans expected a sequel to be coming on its heels. Instead, Epic and Chair moved on to other things. It was one of those projects in particular that got in the way of Shadow Complex 2.
“The reviews were great, it was a record seller for a single-player game on the platform, but at the same time we’ve got this mobile gaming push that’s coming in strong,” Epic Games president Mike Capps said during a GDC Europe keynote, Joystiq reports. “And the big thing for me was that we were looking what the iPhone could do, and the games that were on iPhone, and we thought there was a huge gap, so we put our engine team on the problem, and that’s where we came up with Infinity Blade.
“We were thinking about the sequel [to Shadow Complex], we were ready and ‘Maybe we should start working on this,’ and instead stopped everything and went and made Infinity Blade.”
