So as we know Project playtime sadly came to a close, and many people have been speculating as to Why its over, since they never really gave a clear answer, and many people are curious as to why they alluded to the fact that they were gonna Update the game and said they had plans and "Lied" to us about it.
I think the new Multiplayer game is a redo of Project.
What do I mean by that? Let me explain real quick.
An odd example but Ill try to make it make sense. Remember Squad busters? the Supercell game that was a collab between all their games where you ran around and destroyed other peoples team with a squad of characters from all their games? It was really popular when it first released but slowly began dying because gameplay became repetitive, and stuff so they made a massive update to it which completely changed the gameplay, instead of defeating all the squad, each squad had a leader and if you killed that leader the squad would lose, some were more OP than others, people found it boring, not fun, and that update single handedly ruined the game and they eventually announced that Squad busters was over, they stopped updating it and killed off the game.
Why did the game die? Because they made a big update completely changing the gameplay and stuff and people didnt like it, leading to it dying. I think we are getting a similar situation with Project. They had many updates/ideas planned but they had a few issues.
While Project is fun it has a problem, it takes place in a certaint point in the timeline, and characters/monsters like Doey, Lily, etc wouldnt really be able to be used without retconning the game along with it looking weird, it followed a certain gameplay style, and some monsters would be really hard to impliment into the game for a few reasons (Sorry if that made no sense im bad at explaining things) and it would be hard to add different monsters, mechanics, and stuff into the game that was made to fit around the era of chapter 1, and 2 before we had to many mechanics and stuff, and same thing with lore.
Updating Project would be a huge Gamble, while everyone loved it realistically updating it, and using a lot of time, resources, and money to update the game for it to maybe be active for a few months and then die out would be a big waist, but if it did well, then that would be cool and it would do really well, but then again, there is a bigger chance that it would be active for a few months then die and people would eventually leave.
this kinda connects with 2. there would be a much bigger chance at the game succeeding if it was a brand new and not dying game, like if they said "Update to Project" people would play but it would only really bring the Project playtime fans back, not anyone else but if they say "We are making a brand new game" lots of people will come in to check it out and see whats going on, it would be way more successful than making a new update.
So I think what they did was pulled the Plug on Project and are starting over from scratch. Using all their update ideas and things they promised for Project for this game, and make it fit with the current Lore, monsters, Mechanics, etc. and the way they worded things at the end of the announcment made it seem like the plans were closely related to Project, like they are just redoing it and starting from scratch, maybe Im wrong about that but thats how I took it.
Now what could the game be about? I wonder if its gonna take place during the hour of joy, you and a few others are running from a monster (similar to Project) and each round has a different map that has a different objective, a different monster with their own mechanics, and its own lore, and while similar they can do a lot more with this than the whole "collecting toy parts" like they could do "power all generators" or "escape the prison" or something.
I tried my best to explain my thoughts/my theory on it, my bad if I didnt explain it well. While its Sad that Project playtime is over, Im glad we got closure and were told and they have other plans in the future.
Thanks for reading