Back in the Before Times when E3 was still a thing, Bethesda announced that they were bringing back one of their oldest IPs, Commander Keen. Originally a platform adventure game for PC back in the early '90s, the Commander Keen reboot would instead become a mobile game that combined platforming action with a collectible card game.
The trailer released last year made the game out to be a game version of an early 2000's Saturday morning cartoon, but with microtransactions. The idea, at least to me, was to appeal to nerdy adults that still had fond memories of Commander Keen as well as children that would just be drawn to the animated characters.
It didn’t really work out that way. An early version of the game arrived on Google Play last November, and nobody liked it. Reviews were universally negative, mostly citing poor controls, a buggy interface, and a glitchy connection in the game’s PvP mode.
The game has less than 2 stars out of 5 in nine total reviews. It’s also been downloaded only “1000+” times, which is pretty abysmal for a mobile game.
For these reasons, it seems that Bethesda has decided to pull the plug on Commander Keen.
First spotted by Twitter user @Nitomatta, it seems that ZeniMax Studios, the developer that makes Elder Scrolls Online and was previously working on Commander Keen, have pulled all mention of the game from their website. Commander Keen’s social media handles have also been either taken down or mothballed.
Is this in any way surprising? Not really. Commander Keen never really had an audience. Nobody who grew up with Commander Keen would want to return to the property as a mobile card game, and kids have absolutely no reason to be drawn towards Commander Keen’s hokey cartoon characters. If the parents weren’t on board, the kids certainly wouldn’t care either, and so we arrive at Commander Keen’s untimely demise on mobile.
There’s been no official word from Bethesda, but there probably doesn’t need to be. Commander Keen’s eulogy would be just as ignored as its introduction.
Source: Twitter, PocketGamer