“Last Year” Developer Announces New Studio: Neighborhood Games

In late 2021, Elastic Games — developer of Last Year: The Nightmare — shuttered the doors on their asymmetric horror title. Launching exclusively on Discord’s defunct games platform, Last Year: The Nightmare struggled to sell copies and secure funding that would allow them to continue releasing content; even after re-releasing the title on Steam. Today, it looks like Elastic Games is bouncing back under a new name with a new untitled project.

News comes by way of their very own LAST YEAR — OFFICIAL Discord server, where an announcement image was posted, breaking some 9 months of Discord silence. In the image, the team concedes that lack of sales and drying funds led the studio to inevitable bankruptcy. The message continues, stating that despite this, many key developers from Elastic Games have come back together with the formation of their new studio — Neighborhood Games. Alongside this announcement, two images were also released teasing what looks to be environments from a likely upcoming project. Unfortunately, the Intellectual Property of Last Year was lost in August of 2021, likely forfeit in the bankruptcy. However, it does appear that the team was able to enter into a contractual agreement to retain their initial source code and assets. This may mean that while a Last Year 2 is unlikely to ever exist in name, it can very much live on in spirit.

As for now, Neighborhood Games has very little else to talk about. Their website redirects to a landing page without navigation features or links and the Discord offers no additional information other than what is already in the aforementioned image. Last Year likely taught the team incredibly valuable lessons in a variety of ways, from marketing to release cadence. And with the rise of other asymmetric horror titles like VHS or Prop Night, there are plenty of external sources of inspiration to pull from to ensure that their next title has a smoother launch that captivates an even larger audience.