Doom co-creator's scrapped FPS game has been "completely redesigned" into something that'll blow you away like Elden Ring

Microsoft's brutal cost-cutting in 2025 has led to the axing of several first-party projects, such as the Perfect Dark reboot and a new game from the Elder Scrolls Online devs. However, the company also pulled the plug on some third-party projects it had backed, one of which was the new shooter from Romero Games. Led by Doom co-creator John Romero, the studio has been looking for a way to save or repurpose its project and prevent its doors from completely closing. Well, it seems like it's found a solution. Speaking on a panel at an event in Spain, Romero confirms that his new shooter has "survived" but has been "basically completely redesigned" as a smaller-scale "indie game."

Appearing on a panel during Salón del Videojuego de Madrid this week, Romero was expected to discuss his career and his work on some of the best FPS games ever made like Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein 3D. However, he's also revealed that his mysterious new shooter is still alive and kicking. Although cuts to the studio's workforce have been made, Romero Games has been hunting for new backers and publishers, and it seems the studio has got the result it wanted.

"So, we survived the cancellation of a huge game," Romero says during the panel, the recording of which was spotted by Eurogamer. "There's [been] a really good 110 people working on the game every day for years. The game's been basically completely redesigned. The new game has nothing to do with the previous game, but it incorporates a lot of the elements that we had in the previous game. So, we're ahead […] we're not starting at ground zero. We have 50 million-worth of a game we can take pieces out of and put into a brand new indie game."

It's unclear at this point whether "indie game" means that the project is being self-published, or if a new publisher and backer has been found, but I've contacted Romero Games for clarification on this.

Romero adds that "the design is completely different" for this new-look project, but it is sticking true to the genre he's become renowned for. "I've never played a game like it before," he teases, "other than [the fact] it's a shooter. But the things that you do in it will be, I'd say, probably new to people [in] the way that going through Elden Ring was a really new experience. It was a very crazy place and a different world and it was really cool to explore it and just [go] 'What is that?' And that's like the idea behind what we're doing in this game."

This combination of a smaller scope using some well-funded groundwork should hopefully produce a real winner here, especially if it can convey the same feeling of mystery and wonder that Elden Ring did. Romero sadly gives no details on when we can now expect to see the project get announced or arrive in players' hands, and it's a tough one to predict. Sure, it's totally redesigning the experience, which may suggest a very distant date, but it's got a lot of assets to play with already and is now closer to the indie end of the spectrum as opposed to triple-A.