A single tweet is all it takes. #Soon. Housemarque tweeted that and another hashtag, #RebootDevelop, this morning alongside the image above. Is this Housemarque teasing an impending announcement of their next game? The evidence makes it seem likely.
#Soon #RebootDevelop #Housemarque pic.twitter.com/e4VSp5Pcsi
— Housemarque (@Housemarque) April 19, 2018
In November of last year, Housemarque announced that they were no longer going to be creating arcade focused titles, something that had been a staple for the developer. Games like Resogun, Super Stardust HD, and Nex Machina featured fast paced shooting mechanics that highlighted precision play and getting high scores. Housemarque created games that are easy to pick up and play, but very difficult to master. In their November blog post, they revealed that despite critical acclaim for their titles, declining sales in the genre were forcing them to go another way. “Hence Nex Machina and Matterfall will be the last of their kind coming out of our studio.”
It was a shocking revelation for a studio that started making arcade style shooters 25 years ago with the original Stardust. Toiling away for the last few months, Housemarque has been hard at work on their next game which will reinvent their studio and set the tone for the Housemarque to come. Very little information has been revealed about it, except that it will run on Unreal Engine 4, which the studio used when developing Matterfall.
Reboot Develop is a high-end European game developer’s conference that runs from April 18 to April 20 this year, meaning we’re right in the middle of it. If Housemarque’s tweet and hashtag are anything to go by, it could be that we’ll get some new information about their next game sometime later today or tomorrow. We’re excited to see what comes next from a studio that has regularly made polished and high-quality arcade titles as they made they decision to step away from their usual genre and explore new frontiers. Keep your eyes peeled. We expect to hear something #soon.
