Terraria: Otherworld has been canned by developer Re-Logic after the studio realized the title wasn't going to reach its potential in "any sort of reasonable time or fashion."

Announced back in February 2015, Otherworld was pitched as a Terraria spin-off that would utilize RPG and strategy elements to explore "what might have been" had the original game taken a different path.

Fast-forward three years and it seems Re-Logic has struggled to realize that vision, and while progress has been made since the spin-off was unveiled, the project remains well behind schedule.

"Our team has a clear vision for this game, and, in spite of all of our efforts, the current state of the game remains equal parts far from that vision and beyond behind schedule from our initial planning when we shared Otherworld with all of you three years ago," wrote the studio on the Terraria forums.

"Progress has absolutely been made during that time -- but unfortunately, a very thorough status review of the game versus its intended design showed […] that things were quite a bit further away from the finish line than we had imagined.

"Taking the massive amount of work that would be remaining to complete along with the extensive time it would take to get that done, and how that would greatly interfere with the pursuit of other projects on behalf of Re-Logic -- it becomes clear that this leaves things in a very undesirable state."

While that means Otherworld will never see the light of day, Re-Logic has promised to learn from the process, and has already highlighted some key mistakes.

For starters, the studio claims it should never have spoken publicly about the game at such an early stage, suggesting that "error in judgment" created an emotional rollercoaster for fans. It also believes outsourcing development of such a "critical title" was a mistake, and now intends to bring the core development of its more high-profile projects in-house.

The company will continue to work on the original Terraria while it regroups, and has hinted it could implement some of Otherworld's more promising features in future titles.