Everdale gets a 2nd chance as Metacore acquires it from Supercell

Supercell discontinued its Everdale game last October, but the mobile game is getting a new lease on life from mobile game studio Metacore.

Everdale is the second public game that Metacore is working on in addition to their first hit game, Merge Mansion. While the studio doesn’t have a timeline for its release yet, Metacore is preparing to launch another new game later this spring, said Metacore’s CEO Mika Tammenkoski, in an interview with GamesBeat.

Helsinki-based Supercell, which is known for its quality focus and willingness to cancel games, nixed the Everdale game after announcing it and putting it through beta testing.

“When Supercell decided to kill the game, they approached us and said they saw a lot of potential. They asked whether we would” be interested in Everdale, Tammenkoski said. “We were honored to have this opportunity, but we were also very excited because we see a lot of potential in that game.”

The core attraction

Everdale is a peaceful game about growing a farming town.

It’s hard to say exactly why Metacore wanted to pick up the game. Overall, they liked the game’s elements like building a village. Tammenkoski said he could not comment on details like whether Supercell employees joined the project at Metacore.

Metacore will acquire the game from Supercell but re-create it from the ground up as a free-to-play mobile game based on building and team play. That means that Metacore will use a lot of the same art, but it will also generate new features and gameplay as it sees fit.

“Supercell is known for its high-quality games, so it goes without saying that we saw a lot of potential in Everdale,” Tammenkoski said. “From its vivid world and striking scenery to the strong community element fostered by Supercell, there were a lot of the right building blocks in place for a hit game. Now our team is excited by the positive challenge of delving into Everdale’s market-fit and expanding the game’s audience.”

Metacore CEO Mika Tammenkoski.

The studios aren’t disclosing details of the deal, but Supercell has already transferred ownership of the game and its assets to Metacore, who has begun work with the game. Following Metacore’s typical game development process, their game team has started from square one by forming and testing various hypotheses about why audiences love the game.

“We couldn’t be happier to see Metacore take over Everdale, a very dear game to us,” said Lasse Seppänen, former game lead of Everdale, in a statement. “Throughout the development, it became clear to us that this game has a lot of potential and amazing and loyal fans, but, unfortunately, in the end, it wasn’t the right game for Supercell. Everdale’s team came up with the idea of finding a new home for the game, and we feel confident in transferring ownership of Everdale to the hands of Metacore’s highly talented team. We have the utmost respect for their game development philosophy and can’t wait to see the next evolution of Everdale.”

Metacore is refraining from making any concrete promises on Everdale’s future, and when – or even if – fans can expect a new iteration of the game. They’ve recruited a new game lead, Johannes Peltola (previously EA and Digital Chocolate), to lead the development and are currently recruiting for multiple new roles in Metacore’s game teams and operations.

“We hold an extremely high bar for our games, which is why we can’t say for sure whether Everdale will ever become a live game project – but our hope is that we can continue to strengthen the imaginative world that has already been built. This also offers us a unique opportunity to truly test our game development process and see how it can be applied to existing games,” Tammenkoski said.

Metacore’s team has 110 people.

Metacore, founded in 2014, is a Helsinki-based games company that has had a lot of success in mobile games. Launched in 2020, the studio’s first global hit game Merge Mansion already has over 40 million players. Metacore has secured $180 million in credit from Supercell.

Metacore has about 110 people and they’re spread out among multiple games that are being developed simultaneously.

“Our team will start from scratch and start forming hypotheses,” he said. “They will tear the game down into parts and put things back together, and then test it to see what works with the audience. It’s likely nothing comes out this year. Time will tell.”

Metacore’s big hit is Merge Mansion.

Merge Mansion has been a big success and Tammenkoski said he expects it to keep growing this year. He said that he thinks the game industry itself will continue to grow as well. He said that Helsinki still has a vibrant mobile gaming sector, though some companies are having ups and downs in the downturn.

As for the look and gameplay, Tammenkoski said the final game could turn out to be very different.

“In the end, it might look entirely different,” Tammenkoski said. “They have created a world and there are mechanics in place. We can look into this base fantasy that they have worked on. We have people really excited to work on the game.”