Housemarque’s psychological horror roguelike Returnal is already being showered in mostly positive reviews. With the game launching tomorrow, the development team is no doubt anxious to see if their ambitious experiment paid off.
Housemarque’s co-founder Ilari Kuittinen made a lengthy blog post about the game's development on Thursday. The post describes the studio’s motivations for developing Returnal and the increasingly risk-averse nature of the modern games industry.
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Kuittinen begins the post by expressing the studio’s excitement to get Returnal out the door after four years. He then explains how the team just finished work on Returnal’s day one patch. “There is always something you think you could improve, add, or polish,” says Kuittinen. “I think it is not even possible to develop a “perfect” game with everyone in the team thinking that we have now accomplished everything we ever dreamed of, when finally setting the game free out to the world.” He does not go into detail but indicates the patch relates primarily to improving the game rather than needing to fix any serious issues. That alone sets Returnal apart from other recent high-profile releases like Cyberpunk and Outriders.
He goes on to discuss the studio’s circumstances when production began. According to Kuittinen, the developer counted on the release of 2017’s Nex Machina to secure its financial independence. Housemarque was also partially motivated by keeping arcade-style action alive despite a lack of interest from AAA publishers. Unfortunately, according to Kuittinen, Nex Machina’s overwhelmingly positive reviews did not translate into outstanding sales.
He explains that Nex Machina’s underwhelming popularity caused the company to lose faith in arcade-inspired games as a viable product. However, this encouraged the team to branch out from Housemarque’s usual style of game. According to the post, the studio’s goal with Returnal was to translate its 2D experience into a 3D action game. Kuittinen also made a point of thanking publisher Sony for giving his team the freedom to experiment with the game’s design. The post closes by thanking the development team and promising fans more to come from the Finnish studio.
Game Rant praised Returnal’s world, story, and gameplay in its review. The game follows protagonist Selene after she crashes on the mysterious and seemingly supernatural planet of Atropos. The planet is full of deadly creatures and contains a reality-warping mystery to solve. When Selene dies, she wakes up back in her ship, with the planet reshaping itself after each attempt. Players need to find the source of Atropos’ strange power to have any hope of escape.
The genre-bending action game combines elements of survival horror, Metroidvania, and even bullet hell shooters. It also draws inspiration from science fiction horror classics like Alien, and the game emphasizes atmospheric storytelling. Returnal also features a creepy online component where different players can stumble upon each other’s corpses. While games like Dark Souls have similar systems, it certainly fits in with Returnal’s atmosphere.
Returnal releases April 30th on PlayStation 5.
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Source: Housemarque