The Finnish game studio Housemarque has a long and storied history working with Sony to bring many fan favorite arcade titles to the PlayStation consoles over its 25 year history. Some of its more popular games include titles like Super Stardust HD, Dead Nation, Resogun, and Matterfall to name a few. The studio is preparing to launch its first PlayStation 5 title this year with the third person shooter, Returnal, which was previously announced during the PlayStation 5 reveal stream back in June 2020.
Just recently, the studio put out the latest HouseCast episode, a periodic behind the scenes look at the company and the people that work there. The series kicked off in November as a way to further showcase the studio’s upcoming title Returnal as the team continues to work remotely due to the global pandemic. Episode three focuses purely on gameplay with how the studio was able to take its usual top down, side scrolling arcade-style games and translate that gameplay into a big 3D world.
Game director Harry Krueger admitted that the studio was attempting to be a bit more bold and try new things, though at the heart of Returnal is the familiar gameplay strengths that fans have come to expect from the studio. During the discussion, gameplay footage was shown off, featuring fast paced third person shooting action with dashing, and plenty of enemies to take out. Housemarque is also using the kinetic energy to allow players to better traverse the environment using jumps, air dashes, ledge grabbing, and a hookshot tool that can grapple players to ledges. One gameplay example showed the player using the hookshot to discover a secret on a ledge that would normally be inaccessible.
In addition to the gameplay, Housemarque also touched on the PlayStation 5 and how the hardware has helped the studio to push Returnal even further. In addition to the increased processing power and speed of the SSD, the studio really focused on making the most of the DualSense controller. Using the adaptive triggers, Housemarque was able to create dual functionality with one trigger. Half pressing the left trigger will enable the traditional focus aiming while a full press of the trigger uses the weapon’s alternate fire. However, Krueger also clarified that the controls are fully customizable so players can switch to a more traditional scheme if they want.
A previous episode of the HouseCast showed off how Housemarque came up with the concepts of time travel and horror elements in Returnal. As Krueger mentioned, the dark sci-fi setting was a sort of dream project for him, as he was also able to tap into the sense of mystery, trauma, and horror, using them as a source of inspiration. Even though the game is now third person perspective in a large 3D world, fans can still see a lot of the bullet hell style shooting which the studio’s former games really leaned into.
Returnal releases exclusively for the PlayStation 5 on March 19, 2021.
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