«Haven: Call of the King» ойынының жанрлық әртүрлілігі мен даму тарихы

In July, a more complete demo was made available to gaming websites, featuring platforming levels, space combat, racing, and underwater sections. Traveller's Tales explained the game's story had been written first, with concept art then designed by Rodney Matthews. The story was then broken down into different gameplay genres. Expert game designers for each genre were brought on board to develop each small section of the game. The main team of developers then took each of those sections and attempted to unify them into one seamless whole. GameSpot's Ricardo Torres noted that "the varied landscape is fractally generated using the PlayStation 2's vector units, which are working overtime for the game and allow for some very impressive effects. For example, when you board a spaceship in a third person sequence in the game, you'll be able to take off and head out into space without a loading screen. The game will track your movement and reduce the size and detail of the environments as you gain altitude. The reverse is true when you're approaching a planet and go to land you'll find that detail seen from the air will scale in as you get closer." On 30 October, Midway trademarked the term "FreeFormer gameplay" to describe the gameplay mechanics, stating "FreeFormer gameplay is the next major development in videogaming. The technology in Haven: Call of the King allows for an unbelievable cinematic style smoothness and experience as you encounter the varied play mechanics in the game."

On 29 May 2003, Xicat Interactive announced that despite the game's commercial failure on PlayStation 2, they would be publishing the game for both the Xbox and GameCube later in the year. However, neither version was ever made.

Haven: Call of the King received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. GameSpots Mathew Gallant called it "an often surprising action packed platformer with a distinctive style and plenty of challenge." He was critical of Haven's mag ball weapon, writing "the jumping and other mechanics of Haven are solid, but the limitations of the mag ball and the fairly frequent requirements of its use tend to overshadow them." He concluded "While Haven does offer a lot, it's not quite a sure bet. Primarily, the annoying control problems involved with the mag ball can make an already difficult game needlessly frustrating [ ] Yet the overall feel is that of a very intense and action packed game. The fast paced, quickly changing gameplay is refreshingly unordinary, and while there's an excellent chance that fans of platformers will love the diversity and challenge, some may find it a little too restless and overdone." IGNs Chris Roper called the game "both great and deeply flawed." He praised the gameplay types, writing "variety is what this game's all about, and it's quite welcome." However, he was critical of the lack of story integration into the variation in gameplay styles; "One complaint about nearly every goal is that it often doesn't make any sense why you're doing what you're doing." He concluded "Haven: Call of the King is quite an ambitious title. At certain points it's great, but at others it can be either frustrating or very boring. The game ties in most of the different genres in a pretty smooth manner. Nothing seems entirely out of place [ ] Overall, the game is worth playing through. You'll have to tough it out through some aggravatingly boring sections, but when the game strays from the basics a bit, it can get to be quite fun." Eurogamers Kristan Reed found the game less innovative than Midway claimed: "being mainly a platform game with sub sections to add variety, it comes across as being more heavily indebted to the likes of Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank than being anything revolutionary." He concluded, "Havens pretensions to be some kind of revolutionary product seem sound and exciting on the surface, but scratch that surface for more than an hour or so, and it's apparent that what we're really dealing with is a better than average platformer with cleverly interspersed minigames to present the illusion of expansiveness and freedom [ ] That's not to say it's a bad game, or that you won't enjoy it. If you're a real dyed in the wool platform gamer, Haven has plenty to admire, but it just fails to match or better what's gone before." GameRevolutions Johnny Liu was critical of the core platformer gameplay: "the platform events come off as a standard, undisguised item hunt." Of the graphics, he wrote "the quality varies. Outdoor environments are doused in an over saturated color palette, though the frame rate is smooth enough. The detail work in some of the interior dungeons offers some sharper textures and compelling lighting effects." He concluded "Though it's admirably ambitious, Haven is crippled by trying to do too much. Instead of simply having these separate parts strung together, it would have worked better had the game allowed you to switch from any of these game styles at will." GameSpy's Benjamin Turner said, "The designers [are] attempting to create something unique by combining gameplay ideas from platformers, 3D shooters, vehicular action games and even Marble Madness. While the end result doesn't quite gel, I have to appreciate the fact that they tried." However, he noted that "rather than excelling, it ends up doing a fairly mediocre job of almost everything." He called the platforming sections "rough around the edges," criticizing the collision detection and level design, and was unimpressed with Haven's mag ball. He concluded "there's just too much mediocrity and not enough quality. With a ton of tweaking and a heavy dose of polish this could have been a pretty good game. I get the sense that the creators' hearts were in the right places, but for whatever reason they couldn't execute. Their creation feels unfinished."

Haven was originally intended as the first part of a trilogy, however, due to the game's commercial failure, the second and third parts were never made. For writer/director/designer Jon Burton, the game was an extremely personal project. Speaking in 2006, he opined that because it began as a basic platformer, players and reviewers didn't give it a fair chance: "Because the first hour was basically a platform game people would play the game and write it off as another platformer." Burton always intended for the story to continue, and had very specific ideas as to how the plot would have developed: