Japanese independent studio Nigoro announced last night that they will be delaying its upcoming 2D metroidvania, La-Mulana 2, to 2016. Nigoro cited that the reason for La-Mulana 2’s delay is largely due to various shifts in design the team took while designing the game, which was intended to be released in December this year.

LA-MULANA 2 won’t be released in this year. We are sorry about that, but it’s impossible. 

After our KickStarter project concluded, we spent about one year while we did major revisions for events and worked on the PS Vita version. In addition, we had many turns and twists until we ultimately decided to shift to Unity environment.

Nigoro continued on a more positive note by stating that this extended development time will make console ports of La-Mulana 2 much easier.

“Thanks to that decision, porting into consumer platforms will go smoothly after the PC version is released.”

They plan to not repeat the mistakes of the past with regards to promised release dates.

“Additionally, we’re working hard on this project so as to not repeat our wrongdoing such as when we developed theWiiWare version of LA-MULANA. We claimed “We will have done it in a half year!”, after that we kept apologizing for one year, and then we kept silent for the next year.”

Nigoro was collaborating with California-based developer and publisher Nicalis for the first La-Mulana’s overseas WiiWare release in 2012. However, Nicalis backed out of the project when they felt that low WiiWare sales at the time would hamper La-Mulana’s sales. Nigoro was left with no publisher and was forced to delay the release of their game. They revived the project five months later when they teamed up with Barcelona-based publisher EnjoyUpGames.

On the subject of a hard release date for La-Mulana 2, Nigoro is uncertain.

We don’t wanna spend one more year, but we don’t think it will be released in a few months.

We might publish it as an advance release when we finished the part of the main story, which we actually did before working as NIGORO. But, we’ll never release it until we ensure the quality that is appropriate for the name “LA-MULANA 2.”

The team concluded by apologizing once again for the delays. They thanked their supporters for their patience, and stated that they plan to “disclose game contents as soon as we prepare a website for LA-MULANA 2 in 2016.”

La-Mulana 2, which raised $266,670 on Nigoro’s official Kickstarter last year, is a direct sequel to La-Mulana. Initially released in 2005 for Windows operating systems, the original La-Mulana was only in Japanese and was designed to imitate games for the MSX home computer, which lead director Takumi Naramura cited as his early childhood influences. The game was later remade from the ground up in a 16-bit style in 2011 for the Nintendo Wii, and for Windows, Mac, and PlayStation Vita platforms in 2012. La-Mulana is infamous for its devious traps, tricky platforming, and convoluted puzzles, all of which have caused some fans to compare La-Mulana to other difficult-yet-fair games like those from FromSoftware’s Souls series.

The first La-Mulana game followed an Indiana Jones lookalike named Lemeza Kosugi and his adventures through a massive labyrinth, which was flavored with Mesopotamian and Indic mythology. La-Mulana 2 places players in the role of his apparent daughter Lumisa Kosugi as she journeys through the Norse-themed Eg-Lana. Along the way, Lumisa and her trusty adventurer’s whip will fight powerful monsters and find legendary treasures like her father did in the first game, which will uncover ancient secrets about the world’s creation and destruction, which Lumisa must prevent.

In spite of the delays, Nigoro has maintained a constant stream of updates on its Kickstarter timeline. Among other things, the Nigoro team has graced dutiful fans with sketches of early map designs, screenshots of the game’s playing fields rendered in 3D using the Unity engine (which the first game did not use), and even pictures of curry and rice dishes Naramura ate as part of a backer reward called Curry Hell.

Nigoro has promised fans that La-Mulana 2 will be more intuitive than its predecessor, yet will still retain its trademark difficulty. The Japanese studio has also released alpha builds of the game to Kickstarter supporters, alongside conducting press conferences that showcase the latest builds of the game. We can expect to see more details on Lumisa’s adventures through Eg-Lana as Nigoro continues to polish its latest brutal platformer for the 2016 gaming year.