Though the tumultuous summer of 2020 was only six years ago, it feels more like six decades have passed. While the world was falling apart and we were all stuck inside due to the COVID-19 pandemic, gamers at least had some form of an escape with a new console generation on the horizon. Both Microsoft and Sony revealed their new hardware, and the internet immediately made countless jokes comparing the PlayStation 5 to Wi-Fi routers. Everyone’s a comedian.

Sony’s “Future of Gaming” 2020 event included plenty of exciting announcements, like the exclusives Returnal and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart being shown off for the first time. Third-party studios also revealed plenty of games, and now that Pragmata has finally been released, all the games from that PlayStation 5 reveal stream are out in the wild. Except for one, that is.

Stylish indie Little Devil Inside was featured alongside those heavy hitters during the PS5 reveal stream. I was immediately taken with its art style, humor, and sense of adventure. Its setting is inspired by the Victorian era, but full of monsters and mysterious creatures. You play as a mercenary who sets out to help study those creatures, venturing through forests, riding across deserts, and diving underwater along the way.

My first exposure to Little Devil Inside was during that PS5 reveal stream, and I’m sure plenty of viewers saw the game for the first time then, too. However, that stream wasn’t Little Devil Inside’s debut. Turns out Little Devil Inside had already been in development for at least five years before that 2020 event.

Little Devil Inside was announced in April 2015, which was approximately 11,000 years ago. A Kotaku article covering its announcement compared it to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Dark Souls. The game’s Kickstarter said developer Neostream Interactive was “aiming for a fall 2016 release.” (Y’all, I don’t think they’re going to hit a fall 2026 release at this point.) That Kickstarter page is such a relic from another time that it even has Wii U support as a stretch goal.

Image: Neostream Interactive

The game popped up again at Sony’s October 2021 State of Play, with a long gameplay trailer that ended with good news, or at least that’s how it seemed at the time: Little Devil Inside received a 2022 release window. An Instagram post in December 2021 narrowed that window to winter 2022. Nice! Except, ya know, it didn’t come out in winter 2022.

Neostream and Sony were both quiet about Little Devil Inside for some time until a February 2024 update to the game’s Kickstarter. Titled “Despite all,” the update included an apology for the delays and hinted at conflict behind the scenes at Neostream. The update ended with a new six-minute-long look at Little Devil Inside in Unreal Engine 5 and, gosh darnit, the game still looked amazing.

Image: Neostream Interactive

The team posted another Kickstarter update two months later, in April 2024. “With development cycling on ‘despite all’ that’s happened, we plan to provide you with periodic updates on what we have worked on,” it begins. It’s the last update posted to the game’s Kickstarter.

“Did we all get scammed or what? How is this game not finished yet?” one backer commented earlier in 2026. Another replied that projects like Little Devil Inside are why they stopped backing projects on Kickstarter. Other commenters on the Kickstarter shared similar sentiments. “Holy shit…over 10 years with no tangible game delivered,” one wrote.

(The bottom of the Kickstarter has a message reading, “Sorry you missed out on this project.” Yeah, I… I don’t think I’m regretting not backing it. In 2015.)

Image: Neostream Interactive

Posts on Little Devil Inside’s subreddit are a little more optimistic. “Another Playstation State of Play announced for June 2nd…we’re so back!” one post reads. (Little Devil Inside did not show at June’s State of Play. We are, in fact, not so back.) “Let’s all pray that little devil inside show up tomorrow,” another said. A post from earlier in 2026 asked for recommendations of similar games after the user said they had “been waiting for [Little Devil Inside] ever since it was announced for ps5 (was the main reason I bought one).” Oh, no.

Sony’s June State of Play and the main Summer Game Fest showcase both came and went without an appearance from Little Devil Inside, as did Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase and Nintendo’s latest Direct. The summer whirlwind of announcements is winding down without a word from Neostream about Little Devil Inside.

I, the 1,100 members of the subreddit, and anyone else looking forward to the game shouldn’t be surprised by its absence, though we can be a wee disappointed. Doubly so for the Kickstarter backers who paid for it 11 years ago. Somewhere out there, someone still wants to play Little Devil Inside on their Wii U.