5th Cell Shutting Down

The 5th Cell, responsible for unique and creative titles like Drawn to Life and Scribblenauts, made a post on Twitter essentially implying that the development studio is closing its doors. It is especially sad to see a small tight-knit group of creative folks being forced to part ways after seeing what they managed to achieve with their two aforementioned titles that were well received critically. This news drop roughly an hour ago. Here is the post from Tim Borrelli (previous Animation and Team Leader):

https://twitter.com/Anim8der/status/712052739719598080?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

The 5th Cell originally started out by cutting its teeth on mobile game development in association with THQ before coming into its own and delving into AAA game development on portable and home console platforms. On top of Scribblenauts and Drawn to Life, 5th Cell is also responsible for the real-time strategy and tower defense game known as lock’s quest. The latest game that the studio was working on was Anchors in the Drift, which was to be an adventure RPG. There was a Fig crowdfunding campaign that proved to be unsuccessful as of November, 2016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOOazNa9BKo

In spite of this unfortunate news, it is great to see the positive outreach and support from others in the professional game development community in response. Developers from Pheonix Labs, Valve, Ubisoft and Insomniac have reached out possibly providing some future job avenues for the many affected by this closure. Hopefully, Tim Borrelli and the others from the 5th Cell will be able to find other studios to call home.