Announced in 2015, "Terraria: Otherworld" was an otherworldly spin-off of the highly successful main game. It was supposed to have "strategy and role-playing" elements and an "objective". Then, in 2018, it was canceled. Since then, studio Relogic has continued to add to "Terraria," and "Journey's End," which will be released next week, will be the game's largest expansion. It will also be the last.

In other words, it is safe to say that Otherworld is gone for good. However, in a discussion on Terraria's official Discord server this week, Terraria creator Andrew Spinks, under the name redigit, gave fans of the defunct game a little hope.

Asked (somewhat hopefully) to "finish Terraria: Otherworld," Spinks surprised everyone. He replied, "For 100,000 signatures and $15, I'll open source it."

Since then, at least one petition has appeared, but it has a goal of 1,500 signatures, rather than the 100,000 specified on Discord. I contacted Relogic to see if the Discord exchange was a tease or a promise, and was told, "I can neither confirm nor deny the possible outcome if 100,000 signatures are gathered. ...... Of course, there is always the $15 question."

It seems unlikely that nothing will happen if 100,000 signatures materialize: people will feel betrayed. Nevertheless, even if the source code is released, it will take a community effort to make "Otherworld" playable as it should be. When the game was cancelled, Relogic wrote: "Considering the tremendous amount of work left to complete, the enormous amount of time it will take to complete it, and the significant obstacles it will cause to pursuing other projects on Re-Logic's behalf, It is clear that things are in a highly undesirable state."

"At some point, we have to be honest with ourselves and realize that 'Otherworld' cannot fulfill its potential in any reasonable time or manner."

[11 [On the other hand, the release of "Terraria: Journey's End" next week is as generous a send-off as one could ask for from a game.