While February is an incredibly busy month on the game release calendar, there’s an indie first-person cooperative shooter called PERISH that might be worth your attention alongside all the other big launches. Developed by the British two-person team ITEM42 and published by THQ Nordic’s HandyGames, PERISH is set in a world inspired by Greek mythology where players take the mantle of a corporeal spirit seeking to defeat the underworld deities, the only way to gain access to Elysium.
With the game set to launch on Thursday, February 2nd for PC (via Steam), Wccftech interviewed ITEM42’s Co-Founder and Lead Programmer Regan Ware to get a detailed introduction to PERISH (which features advanced graphics technologies like raytraced reflections and shadows and DLSS 3 support).
What were your main inspirations for PERISH? How long have you been working on it?
Our main inspirations came from a few different sources: for environments, we were sometimes inspired by depictions of classical mythology, such as Charles-Louis Clérisseau’s fantasy ruins and Gustave Doré’s striking depictions of underworld realms. Regarding characters and enemies, we went for an oversized Warhammer models vibe, with each enemy type having its own distinct personality and visual flair. Finally, for gameplay and story, we were inspired by the spawn director and cooperative aspects of Left 4 Dead and the direct narrative storytelling in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Rather appropriately, PERISH is a chimera of some of our favorite games and artists growing up as kids.
How long can players expect the campaign to last?
It’s always a hard question for us to answer with PERISH since it really depends on how skilled you are! We’re expecting an average player to take around 8-10 hours to complete a full run and reach an ending for the first time. But once you’ve done that, there are more challenges to be attempted.
How does co-op work in the game? Is progress shared between all participants?
We wanted co-op in PERISH to be as simple as possible so it’s not getting in the player’s way. Players join each other in the hub world, “Pantheon” and can start a run together without any restrictions on gear, progress through the game, etc. So if you were struggling with a particular level, your friend with their Boreas bolt action rifle could join you for your next attempt. For the same reason, we went with Epic Online Services for our networking backend so that no matter where you purchase the game, you can all play together. It doesn’t require an Epic account, so you can play with your friends who have it on Steam, GOG, Epic Store, etc. seamlessly.
Are you planning any sort of co-op endgame, maybe with some procedural elements?
I will say that in both co-op and singleplayer, there are two distinct endings depending on how you play, but the distinction between them is a cryptic puzzle to be solved by players. I might spoil the nature of the endgame content if I say any more, but post-release we are looking at including some extended wave mode scenarios that would represent the purest manifestation of the flow-state gameplay (thinking of Devil Daggers/Hyper Demon but with that slower PERISH cadence).
Is there any desire to port PERISH to consoles at some point?
We can’t say too much on this, but it is being looked at by Handy Games’ studio in Cologne, MassiveMiniteam. Although nothing has been decided yet.
Which ray tracing effects are going to be available in PERISH?
PERISH supports both raytraced reflections and shadows. We found these both gave the best balance of visuals and performance. There are some really great areas for reflections, especially in the later areas of the game.
Did you consider upgrading to Unreal Engine 5?
Given how far into development we already were with PERISH, upgrading to UE5 wasn’t something we seriously considered since so many things fundamentally changed and us just being a team of 2 it would’ve taken far too much focus away from the game itself. The new tech within UE5 is really exciting for the future, though.
Will Intel XeSS support be added later to PERISH?
Although XeSS isn’t supported at launch, we’re absolutely open to implementing it if we find the demand is there!
What was your first impression of DLSS 3 as a developer? Do you feel AI-based Frame Generation is the future of rendering to keep up with advanced ray tracing effects?
My first impression of DLSS 3 when I first got it running in PERISH was honestly some shock at the framerates I was hitting! Pushing way past my 120hz monitor’s capabilities with PERISH felt great. As for the future, it does appear to me the best solution we have to the increasing demands of both framerates and visuals with ray tracing combined. It seems the days of 60fps being enough are coming to an end, while at the same time, games continue to look better and use more intensive rendering techniques. DLSS 3 provides a way to combine those 2 previously exclusive demands.
How much of an improvement does DLSS 3 introduce in your game compared to DLSS 2 (Super Resolution)?
The difference is huge, DLSS 2 is great and I actually prefer to use them both together since I find DLSS 2 to provide sharper AA than solutions like TAA. But in isolation, DLSS 3 is closer to a doubling of framerate, while DLSS 2 is a more variable 20-45% in PERISH (depending on the area, hardware, etc of course, but the difference between the two is consistent).
One of the potential drawbacks of DLSS 3 is the additional latency. Does Frame Generation add significant latency in your implementation, or is Reflex able to cover that?
Personally, I haven’t noticed any additional latency while using DLSS 3 in PERISH. While not a competitive game, PERISH is an FPS and so seems to me most likely to reveal any latency increase, but I found any increase imperceptible.
The new GeForce RTX 4000 Series also introduced Shader Execution Reordering (SER), Opacity Micro-Maps (OMM), and Displaced Micro-Mesh (DMM) to help with ray tracing optimization. All of these have to be explicitly enabled and set up by game developers. Are you planning to take advantage of any of them?
For us using Unreal Engine 4, there is actually a branch of the engine maintained by NVIDIA that we use for PERISH. It includes many optimisations for ray tracing, but I believe the UE4.27 doesn’t have those 3 specific improvements yet, but it’s highly maintained so I wouldn’t be surprised if these are added to the 4.27 branch. Regardless, they are already included in NVIDIA’s branch of Unreal 5 and no doubt something we’re considering.
Lastly, what do you think of RTX Remix as a developer?
Before working on games full time, I was an avid modder, as so many younger devs are now. I spent many nights plugging away in the Source Hammer Editor, a truly painful yet lovable piece of software to use! RTX Remix in comparison just shows the insane leap in technology that’s happened since then and it’s another tool that I have no doubt is going to lead to modders blowing people’s minds even more with what they can do with their favorite games.
If people want to remix PERISH, I’m all for it. Making your game mod-friendly is an underappreciated task in terms of how much work and effort it requires, so I think it’s great that RTX Remix gives modders an opportunity to play with games that can’t necessarily justify making their game moddable from the ground up.
Thank you for your time.
