Reave was an upcoming VR extraction dungeon crawler from Alta, the studio behind Township Tale. The company announced that the game has been cancelled despite the game being in a mature enough state for months of open playtesting.
Following the successful launch of Township Tale on Quest in 2021, studio Alta announced it had raised more than $12 million in investment to expand its studio and accelerate development of the game.
In April 2024 the studio revealed it was working on a new game, at the time codenamed ‘Project 2’. About a year later, the game got its official name, Reave, and was said to mix dungeon crawling with extraction-style PvPvE gameplay.
The studio underwent several rounds of closed alpha testing, following a series of open beta testing rounds which began in late 2025. Through development diaries consistently published by the studio during testing, it was easy to see the game’s steady evolution as the developers refined mechanics, enemies, art, lighting, and more.
While the game appeared to be on a steady trajectory toward launch, this week the studio unexpectedly announced that Reave is being cancelled before ever making it to market. Here is the full announcement as published on the game’s official Discord server:
This is not an easy announcement to make @everyone but we want to be direct with you: Reave is ceasing development.
Like many teams across the games industry, and especially within the VR space, we have faced increasingly difficult market conditions alongside the rising cost of development. Despite every effort, we have reached the difficult decision to end development of Reave at Alta. While this may appear as though Reave is being left behind, that could not be further from the truth. If circumstances had allowed, we would have continued building and expanding Reave alongside all of you for years to come.
This unfortunately means that the current playtest will be the final playtest for Reave.
On Monday, Reave’s gates will close for the final time:
Between now and then is the final opportunity to step into Reave before the gates close forever.
This Discord server will remain open for a short while so the community has some time together, though it too will likely close soon after.
From everyone who worked on Reave: Thank You!
This team cared deeply about what we were building. Every update, every environment, every feature, every creature, every balance pass, every late night and long discussion came from people who genuinely wanted to create something special: a dark fantasy PvPvE extraction game built for VR.
We are incredibly proud of what Reave became, even at this stage of development, and endlessly grateful for the support, feedback, excitement, clips, bug reports, encouragement, and passion you gave us throughout the journey. We are deeply sorry that we cannot continue it with you all.
In the time remaining, we’d encourage you to share other games, communities, and places to adventure with the friends you made in Reave’s Encampment and Fallen Bastion, so those bonds can continue beyond these walls.
And one final thing, from me to all of you: You were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And you know what? So was Reave!
At this time it’s unclear what the news means for the Australia-based studio more broadly. Layoffs have not been confirmed, but it’s hard to imagine that things are running smoothly behind the scenes with the cancellation of a project that’s been in development for at least two years and was expected to launch this year. Also unclear is what the closure of Reave means for the studio’s previous title, Township Tale.
I’ve reached out to the studio for more info and will report back if any additional details become available.
