At the yearly DICE Summit in Las Vegas, where Returnal won two awards for Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition and Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design, a few key Housemarque developers participated at a roundtable with journalists. GamesBeat transcribed the conversation where Housemarque Managing Director Ilari Kuittinen revealed that the studio is now working on a new IP, though he didn’t share any further details on the project.
We had our stint working on multiplayer games, because a few years back it seemed like you needed to have some kind of multiplayer experience. We tried that, and we really didn’t do it as well. But it’s early days with us starting a new game, a new IP, concepting it out. We’ll see what comes with that.
In the first half of his statement, Kuittinen refers to the now-defunct Stormdivers, which was the company’s focus for a while as it transitioned away from its trademark arcade games (Dead Nation, Resogun, Alienation, Nex Machina, Matterfall). Stormdivers was meant to be the first live service game made by Housemarque. In this sci-fi Battle Royale title, players descended on an abandoned island where a dangerous nano-experiment-gone-wrong had created a permanent artificial storm system that devoured everything in sight.
The game didn’t catch on amidst the sea of Battle Royale games that littered the market back then, so Housemarque pivoted to the triple-A project that turned out to be Returnal. The rest, as they say, is history; the game was so successful and critically acclaimed that its publisher Sony decided to buy the Finnish company shortly afterward.
Housemarque might be about to get many more awards at the upcoming BAFTA Games ceremony, by the looks of the nominations. Returnal is listed in the fight for eight prizes (Best Game, Artistic Achievement, Audio Achievement, Game Design, Music, Narrative, Original Property, and Technical Achievement).
