儘管在2024年經歷了較為艱難的首發階段，由《奧日》系列開發團隊打造的角色扮演動作遊戲《永無寧日》憑藉近期上線的合作模式更新迎來明顯回暖。工作室首席執行官Thomas Mahler近日在社交平台發文，介紹了項目未來規劃，並談及與《黑帝斯》和《艾爾登法環》等作品競爭的可能性。
《永無寧日》在2024年4月開啟搶先體驗時，曾在Steam平台吸引約1.5萬名玩家同時在線，但到當年年底，在線人數一度降至不足百人。2025年下半年推出的更新帶來小幅回升，而真正的增長出現在今年1月底「Together」合作更新上線之後。數據顯示，遊戲銷量在短時間內從100萬份增長至150萬份。Mahler在2月初表示，遊戲單月收入已超過工作室維持運營所需成本。
目前，開發團隊正為1.0正式版做準備。Mahler表示，未來仍將推出大型劇情擴展內容，包括新區域、新故事線及更多過場演出。同時，團隊也計劃在擴展內容之間嘗試新的玩法模式，探索將《永無寧日》打造為長期持續運營作品的可能性。
Mahler進一步表示：「如果我們執行得當，不做任何愚蠢的事情，《永無寧日》有可能成為首批真正的『永恆遊戲』之一，而其『終局』體驗將遠遠超出傳統ARPG的範疇。」他解釋稱，這並非意味著無休止的重複刷取內容，而是希望玩家在想體驗不同玩法時，無需離開遊戲本身，「只需在遊戲內部進行切換即可」。
在談及玩法方向時，Mahler認為，憑藉現有的戰鬥系統與開發基礎，團隊若開發Roguelike模式，有潛力在同類作品中占據一席之地。他還指出，部分生存類遊戲在戰鬥深度方面存在不足，如果Moon Studios未來基於現有系統嘗試生存題材項目，有望實現具備高強度戰鬥體驗的作品。
不過，Mahler強調，這些設想的前提是《永無寧日》持續作為核心項目進行長期開發。目前，持續擴展和完善現有作品仍是工作室的主要目標。
With No Rest for the Wicked, we're in an extremely interesting space right now after we shipped our Together update and are gearing up for 1.0. Let me ramble and share my thoughts for a minute: We never built Wicked as 'one game' that we finish and then replace with a sequel. We built it as a foundation, a platform. Over the past 5–10 years, we’ve created hundreds of thousands of assets, animations, systems, tools... we basically crafted an entire world. And I truly believe that the work we put into crafting Wicked that way will compound in value in the weeks, months and years to come. To me, this is a quite radically different development approach that could potentially even change how larger publishers look at game development. For Wicked, we’re going with an expansion model. Big campaign expansions will always be looming up ahead: More areas to explore, more story to unravel, more cinematics to experience, in short: More of your traditional ARPG fare. But in-between those expansions, me and some of my design team will always keep trying to push new ways of play into Wicked in order to potentially create that 'forever game' that many of us have always been dreaming of (I think in many ways the allure of that was what spawned the 'Metaverse' craze a few years back). My point is: For the past 30+ years, when a games studio finished a game, they either made a sequel while starting mostly from scratch or they started to develop an entirely new IP and usually had to rebuild everything. But I think we're finally at a point where it makes sense to break that old model: Because of the foundation we have, if we plan to fully commit to building a rogue-like that could rival Hades and other genre-references out there, we automatically have a huge leg-up by simply being able to already use our combat system and everything we've built so far. We don't have to reinvent the wheel or start from 0 and spend years building a base. Often times in development, the first couple of years are spent on pre-production where you figure out the world, the characters, the design, the systems... and usually then there's a mad rush when you fully enter production to pull all these pieces together in order to actually make the game that was dreamt up in these years prior. But given our foundation, we're now able to jump straight into the actual meat and potatoes of just crafting the game we want to make. That would only be possible if Wicked remains as one game that we'd keep expanding upon, which is currently still our intention. I've been frustrated in recent years because I think Survival Games are a bit stuck and so far I think Survival Games work more because of their addictive systemic loops instead of the perfection of all their core pillars. Case in point: I couldn't name a single survival game out there that has an insanely rich combat system. I'm sure devs had to spend most of the development time on other stuff and... rightly so. But... if we want to craft a survival game, we basically get the combat 'for free' since we already built it and spent years refining it. No publisher out there would fund a survival game where the pitch is 'This will be a survival game with combat as deep as Elden Ring!' - Everyone would understand that the costs would be horrendous and you'd question if the designer has properly done his homework. But if we do it based on the foundation we already built, suddenly that goal becomes entirely feasible. I recently discussed this idea with a senior person at Riot and got the same confirmation: If you'd want to build a new type of MOBA, one based on an animation-commit combat system instead of their old point and click foundation, you'd get booted out the room. Unfathomable, too costly and way too risky. And... they might be right. Unless you already have all the bits and pieces. Whenever I share this core idea with gamers, sometimes people draw comparisons to games like Spore. But the analogy isn't apt: Yes, Spore tried to be many games at once, but it was all built simultaneously, and then shipped as a packaged product. That doesn't work, it's too complex of a task and our brains aren't built that way. Wicked is the polar opposite: We started with one extremely solid core - our ARPG campaign. Now we expand outward, over time, in modules that share DNA. In many ways, this is close to what Will Wright was dreaming up in the 90's: Interconnected systems across different experiences. That idea was just too early back then and the infrastructure to deliver that didn't exist. But now it does. If we execute properly and don't do something really stupid, No Rest for the Wicked has the potential to become one of the first true 'forever games' and the 'endgame' experience would go far beyond what's traditionally seen in ARPGS: Not in the sense of endless grind. But in the sense that you don’t have to leave the game if you want something slightly different. You just pivot inside it. The ARPG campaign will always be the heart. And with 1.0, I think we'll deliver on that in spades. But when you finish a quest and feel like doing something else for a while, I believe the world should be your oyster. It's all incredibly ambitious and - frankly - quite insane. But so was building Wicked in the first place 😂🤣
