Striking Distance Studios has revealed their latest title, and along with it, seemingly an entirely new tone.
If you were wondering, yes, this is the same Striking Distance Studios that released The Callisto Protocol in 2022.While you will definitely find The Callisto Protocol defenders today, the game’s technical issues at launch, and the poor management of that situation, hampered its opportunity to be a financial success, and for that matter, redeem itself in the eyes of fans. It certainly didn’t help that EA would turn out to release an incredible Dead Space remake a few months later, starting off what was one of the greatest years in video game releases.
But that’s all behind Striking Distance Studios now. As we reported last January, the studio started posting new job openings after several staff left the company, including founder Glen Schofield. Taking Glen’s place as head of the studio was Steve Papoutsis, who worked together with Glen on the original Dead Space games. While they were a few months earlier than everyone else, Striking Distance was definitely part of the trend of game studios hiring again after a period when they had to be reorganized, and had layoffs.
While Steve and his staff stayed mostly quiet, we finally know what they’re working at now. Project Birdseye has been revealed to be [REDACTED], a Hades-style roguelike set in The Callisto Protocol’s universe. But then, [REDACTED] doesn’t look anything like The Callisto Protocol either. That grimdark realism suited for horror has been swapped in for a darkly comic, nihilistic tone. And it comes with a matching comic book cel-shaded aesthetic, perhaps resembling a 2000 AD title more than anything that Marvel or DC would publish.
As reported by Gematsu, publisher Krafton has provided this description:
“Black Iron, a state-of-the-art penitentiary located on Jupiter’s icy moon Callisto, is overrun with hordes of infected inmates. As a modest prison guard your job is simple—get to the last escape pod and get out alive.
But you aren’t the only survivor looking to escape. Your rivals—a deranged custodian, a violent gangster, a maniacal lunch lady, and more—can’t wait to step over your corpse and save themselves.
Only one of you can make it off the moon—make sure it’s you!”
Those rivals certainly sound a lot like the bosses and sub-bosses Zagreus faced, so this is definitely familiar territory. Striking a new tone out of the Dead Space-like universe is as dramatic a departure as Alien III was from Aliens. If there’s anything to be gleaned from this, it’s that Striking Distance Studios has chosen to take down the scale of their projects, but allow this to increase on the creativity, and even ambition. It’s a great sign that even a studio that suffered their reputational damage can bounce back if the circumstances are right. Is it too much to say that this should also make us hopeful for Krafton’s latest acquisition too? We would certainly like to believe so.
[REDACTED] is coming this October 31, 2024, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows via Steam. You can check out the announce trailer below.
