John Romero Is Working On A Shooter Inspired By Elden Ring

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John Romeros Cancelled Shooter Is Back And Its Inspired By Elden Ring

Covering the video games industry since 2017, with experience in news, articles, lists, and reviews (and I blame The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for that).

If you are a fan of RPGs and want a third-person version: Tayná Garcia is a Brazilian journalist (but you can call her Tay) who ended up working with video games after finishing Zelda: Majora's Mask when she was a kid. With more than eight years of experience in the segment, she has been an assistant editor at Jovem Nerd and is currently a contributor at DualShockers and a writer for gaming magazines for Editora Europa. Oh, and she may like Hideo Kojima a bit too much.

Earlier this summer, the gaming community received the unfortunate news that Romero Games, the current studio of the legendary John Romero, was shelving its next game after funding was pulled and part of the development team was laid off, following mass layoffs with ties to Microsoft.

However, now it seems we all should get ready and wear our best armor to rip and tear through a new kind of hell because the project has been fully resurrected and is returning with a brand-new, exciting structure.

From Hell To The Lands Between, I Guess

During a special panel at the Salón del Videojuego de Madrid 2025, which took place on December 6th and 7th in Spain, John Romero surprised everyone by announcing that Romero Games is back on track and has rescued the project that had been previously shelved.

“So, we survived the cancellation of a huge game”, Romero stated, drawing significant applause from the audience – and certainly from us, as we write this article.

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The legendary creator of Doom, Quake, and other iconic shooters, went on to explain that the project has returned with significant changes, including a smaller development team and a surprisingly more ambitious scope.

“There are a really good 110 people working on the game every day for years. The game has been basically completely redesigned. This new game has nothing to do with the previous game, but it incorporates a lot of the elements we had in the previous game”, Romero detailed. “We are not starting at ground zero. We have 50 million worth of a game. We can take pieces out of and put into a brand new indie game”.

[...] the project has returned with significant changes [...]

According to Romero, the smaller team is very excited about this new design, believing that having fewer people working on it will result in a more fun game (for them and for the players).

“It's a much smaller game”, he explains. “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 the code or design or whatever to do it themselves. And now we can actually do that. And that’s why small teams are great!”

Finally, the developer confirmed that the upcoming game will be a shooter, promising to deliver an experience unlike anything seen before – and even having an unexpected inspiration from FromSoftware’s Elden Ring.

“I have never played a game like it before. It’s a shooter, but the things you can do in it [will attract] new people, much like the way that going through Elden Ring was – a really new experience”. He added, “It has a very crazy place and a different world, and it was really cool to explore it.”