John Romero’s Cancelled Xbox Game Was A "Priest Simulator" With Hotline Miami Vibes
We finally know what the father of Doom was working on for the last ten years before Xbox pulled the plug, and it sounds beautifully chaotic.
When Xbox swung the axe last July during their massive layoff wave, Romero Games was one of the studios left holding a severed contract. We knew they had a publisher agreement with Microsoft that went up in smoke, but we had no idea what they were actually building. Thanks to a new report from Mike Straw at Insider Gaming, the mystery is solved. The game was called Hellslayer, and honestly, I am kind of sad we won't get to play it in its original form.
The Gospel of Gunfire
According to Straw's sources, Hellslayer was a first-person shooter centered around a priest fighting demons. If that sounds a bit generic for the guy who invented the genre, the mechanics are where it gets interesting.
The game reportedly took major inspiration from Hotline Miami. The core loop involved an "instant restart" mechanic. If you died, the music didn't stop and the loading screen didn't pop up because you were just instantly reset to the start of the area to try again. This suggests a game built on speed, precision, and trial-and-error gameplay rather than a sprawling narrative adventure.
Ten Years in Development Hell
The most shocking detail from the report isn't the priest with a shotgun but the timeline. Sources claim Hellslayer had been in the works for nearly a decade.
I have to agree with some of the chatter on Reddit here because if a game has been cooking for ten years and gets cancelled, it usually means the kitchen was on fire long before the publisher walked in. A decade is an eternity in game development. For context, Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal both came out while this project was apparently spinning its wheels. It explains why Xbox might have been hesitant to keep funding it after the layoffs.
From the Ashes: The New Project
The good news is that Romero Games isn't dead. While Hellslayer as we knew it is gone, the studio is moving forward with a "completely redesigned" title that scavenges parts from the corpse of the cancelled game.
Romero himself confirmed at a panel earlier this month that they aren't starting from scratch. They are taking the assets and ideas from the cancelled project and molding them into something different. He teased that while it is something he has "never played before," fans of classic Id Software titles will feel right at home.
My Take
John Romero is a legend, but legends don't always pay the bills. The industry is brutal right now, and a ten-year dev cycle for an indie-sized shooter is a massive red flag. Hopefully, this "redesign" is the focus the studio needs to finally ship something. I am definitely curious to see what a "Hotline Miami FPS" looks like when it isn't trapped in development hell.