I Am So Excited for METAL EDEN

I didn’t think I’d be writing about this game.

I especially didn’t expect to see anything from it ever again after leaving Reikon Games almost 3 years ago.

But somehow, METAL EDEN came back.

METAL EDEN was the first game I got to work on professionally as a full-time game developer. I made a lot of weapon animations, maintained the animation blueprint for the player, and did many other things that made up what you can see today. And I have never been this excited for a game coming out.

I won’t be getting into the details of development (because I can’t), but what I can say is that I will be forever grateful to Reikon for giving this trans lesbian game industry newbie a chance to make something good. If not for them, I would not have learned how to work with Unreal, I would not have gotten the inspiration to start my own project, maybe I wouldn’t even have met my now wife.

There are things I wish I did differently while working there. I was new! I wasn’t as confident about myself and I certainly didn’t want to question the status quo, the game plan, and potentially get myself in trouble. (Certainly not a them issue. I wanna emphasize, I was new, and even though I’ve been told to speak freely about things, I didn’t, because I was worried about how they’d react)

All of that has held me back a bit.

Then the Russian invasion of Ukraine happened in 2022. I was already uncomfortable about living in Poland and now I had real bad death anxiety going on all the time, which was really impacting my ability to do things. I wish I told anyone about everything what I was struggling with.

The Splash job seemed too good, and so I decided that I wanted to try something new and move to the UK. It didn’t last long. But I’ve always kept thinking about METAL EDEN.

Then in 2024 Reikon laid off about 80 team members, the original teaser trailer disappeared, and every reference to the game was scrubbed from socials and everything. Even the label the game was originally published under had shut down. I thought the game was dead by that point.

The only thing I had to remember it by, was this image they made for Christmas of 2023, which I had as my wallpaper for the past few months.

So the announcement at this year’s PlayStation State of Play came as quite a shock honestly! I didn’t know what to expect, especially after 3 years of development I wasn’t involved in. I was very pleasantly surprised to find out a lot of my work was still in the game, front and center. I had a lot of fun going through gameplay videos and pointing out to my wife all the different animations I did, what changed, what was new, etc. Whoever took over after me did a good job on making new anims that fit the game’s existing style! And it looks really good and fun!

It’s also honestly an interesting feeling, being excited for and wanting to play a game you made. I would have thought I’d feel ambivalent, because why wouldn’t I? I spent possibly thousands of hours, sitting in the editor, in the game, in Maya, making and testing stuff. If I stayed for the entire dev period, it would have been hard to experience the game as if I was playing it for the first time.

So, good job Reikon, you did it! Thank you for the good times. Thank you to the entire METAL EDEN team, current and past, for all of your help and hard work. I’m so happy that this game is finally coming out soon and that all of this was not for nothing.

Go get it on May 6th this year at MetalEden.com on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

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