Sci-Fi Tether Put on Indefinite Hold Due to Financial Issues

Freesphere Entertainment’s Tether — a sci-fi horror game following a terraformation mission on Mars — has sadly gone on hiatus. Originally announced in 2016, Tether‘s future is now uncertain as its director, Mark Gregory, announced the project is “on ice for the foreseeable future.”

This week I have decided to put @TetherGame on ice for the foreseeable future. This is due to two factors; 1). We’ve been an unfunded team for 2 years now and I cannot allow the wonderful people I worked with to continue to grind away with any sort of financial reward seeming.. — Mark Gregory (@GameDevMark) July 8, 2018

Gregory cites two main reasons for the game’s hiatus; first, the development of the game had been unfunded for two years, and he doesn’t want to occupy his team’s time when pay isn’t possible. The second reason is that he doesn’t want to risk the studio’s future by securing an investment that may ultimately backfire if, say, the game doesn’t meet sales expectations. It’s a tough situation, but his studio will focus now on smaller projects. As this is a hiatus and not an outright cancelation, Tether could eventually see the light of day (or darkness of space?).

Game description from Tether‘s Steam page:

“Tether is a first-person adventure game based in a dilapidated science fiction world. Earth is dying after the collapse of several continents throughout the world following the destruction of the Moon – as natural disasters sweep the planet, the newly formed United Environmental Federation (UEF) accelerate plans to terraform the nearest possible habitable planet, Mars. You play as Lesleigh Hayes – a Biological Research Assistant for the UEF – on her first deep space voyage to Mars. Once aboard the Sonne, Lesleigh’s thoughts turn to her children as she re-lives some of their final conversations before leaving. As catastrophic events unfold on the UEF Sonne, Lesleigh is forced to survive the psychological horrors of isolation in deep space.”

Here’s hoping Freesphere still has some horror ideas to give us in the future.



Disclosure: Mark Gregory has been an on and off supporter of our Patreon.