Indie Developers Create Their Own Star Fox Games, Tired of Waiting for Nintendo
Frustrated by Nintendo's long silence on new entries in the Star Fox series, several indie developers are making their own games inspired by the franchise. They face funding challenges and publisher skepticism but hope for audience support.
Indie Developers Take Initiative
Since the last original Star Fox game – Star Fox Zero on Wii U – Nintendo has not announced any new mainline entries. Although a remastered Star Fox 64 is coming to Switch 2, fans and developers are tired of waiting. As a result, multiple indie studios have started creating their own games that echo the classic series.
Among them are Ex-Zodiac, Whisker Squadron: Survivor, Rogue Eclipse (from Huskrafts), and Wild Blue Skies (from Chuhai Labs, founded by former Star Fox programmer Giles Goddard). These games aim to capture the fast, frenetic combat of the original while modernizing the experience.
Funding Issues and Publisher Attitudes
Developers reveal that most publishers consider the genre “dead” and refuse to fund such projects. For instance, Rogue Eclipse creator Husban “Mcdoogleh” Siddiqi says that when pitching the game, he heard from multiple publishers that the genre is dead. Similarly, Flippfly creative director Aaron San Filippo reports that his team had to lay off staff in February 2025 due to lack of funding for a more ambitious follow-up to Whisker Squadron: Survivor.
Consequently, many developers turn to crowdfunding, following success stories like Hollow Knight and Pillars of Eternity. Siddiqi argues that an audience still exists, pointing to the success of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (2019), which prompted Bandai Namco to announce a sequel at The Game Awards 2025.
Balancing Past and Present
Developers strive to strike a balance between the original feel and modern expectations. For example, Ex-Zodiac creator Ben Hickling admits he made the game more responsive and snappier than the original actually was, because that’s how he remembered it from childhood. Meanwhile, Wild Blue Skies director Francis Pétrin says the project is more about capturing the memory of 1990s Saturday mornings than being a precise clone.
Giles Goddard, who worked on the original Star Fox, notes that the series’ popularity partly stems from its rarity today. He believes the current wave of indie developers making Star Fox-style games is a natural progression – a generation that grew up playing 3D-era games is now becoming game developers themselves.
Overall, these indie games attempt to revive a genre that big publishers consider risky but that fans remember fondly. As Siddiqi puts it: “Arcade flight experiences still offer a more playful, exaggerated fantasy gameplay fulfillment that players simply may not be able to get elsewhere.”
