Justin Ross, one of the developers involved with the creation of Faceless, a Slender Man mythos-inspired Half-Life 2 mod, has set out on his own to develop Alas Mortis, a free-to-play multiplayer horror title.
Ross left the Faceless project and established Fiddlehead Games to create Alas Mortis, a "terrifying re-imagining of hide and seek that pits humans against a flying, bat-like demonoid," according to the game's description.
"I just felt I needed to start my own project, and create my own monster and horror game which is what I'm trying here with Alas Mortis," Ross wrote on the game's IndieDB page. "For people who have donated to Faceless, the money is still around but it's in the process of being transferred over to the new development team so they continue developing Faceless and bring this wonderful, terrifying game to fruition.
"I'm like most of you now who want to see this game succeed, release, and I for one cannot wait to play this with everyone," he continued.
The game's lead promotional designer Adam Sklar announced on ModDB in July that Ethereal Entertainment indefinitely postponed the development of Faceless. He outlined at the time that Faceless will reenter development as a "partial reboot" pending the recruitment of new development team members.
Last November, Valve hesitated at publishing Faceless on Steam because of copyright concerns with the Slender Man IP. While Ethereal obtained permission from the creator of Slender Man, Something Awful user Victor Surge, Valve required permission from the third-party who owns Slender Man's option rights. Faceless was eventually included in the sixth set of Steam Greenlight games approved by Valve's vetting process in April.