Dead Island studio Techland delays new game Hellraid

Dead Island studio Techland has delayed the release of its next game, a first-person co-op slasher called Hellraid, from this year to 2014, when the title will release digitally on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Previously known as Project Hell, the fantasy game started out as an internal weapon mod for Dead Island, which Techland said acted as "proof that chopping monsters frozen by magic spells using two-handed swords is brutally fun and addictive".

However, game producer Marcin Kruczkiewicz said today that it was necessary to delay the game in order to add new singe-player and co-op features, and to redesign elements of the title that didn’t gel with playtesters, like the magic system.

“Since we started developing Hellraid we have had a clear goal to create a game that we all would love to play,” he said. “We wanted to pay tribute to the best aspects of classic titles we grew up on and enhance them with new ideas, modern technology and extensive co-op that would provide players with dozens or even hundreds of hours of pure and bloody fun. If we released our game this year we would have to make too many compromises and the final product probably wouldn’t meet all our promises and players’ expectations.”