A History of Housemarque Part III: The Road To Returnal
“We are extremely grateful to our fans and partners, who have enabled us to work on awesome games like Super Stardust HD and Outland. For your unfailing love and support we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. But now it’s time to move on to new genres. Lackluster sales of Nex Machina have led us to the thinking that it is time to bring our longstanding commitment to the arcade genre to an end. While this genre will always hold a special place in our hearts, the industry is moving more toward multiplayer experiences with strong, robust communities, and it’s time for Housemarque to move forward with the industry.”
These words came as a seismic shock to many as they came from one of the oldest, most prolific arcade studios in the industry. The idea of Housemarque not developing arcade titles was almost like if McDonald’s stopped selling burgers. Fans feared that the studio was bending the knee to what was “in” and just following trends. A justified concern given 2017 was coincidentally the year that also saw the rise of battle royale games. With PUBG becoming incredibly popular and the release of Fortnite’s battle royale mode, a mode solely responsible for the unprecedented success the game would see from that point forward, it’s easy to see why gamers would speculate that battle royale would be the route that the arcade giant would opt for.
Eight months later Housemarque revealed their newest title, Stormdivers. Though the forty second reveal trailer was filled with imagery of stormy environments, not much could be gathered from the reveal other than the name of the project and that it would be the second game the studio developed in the Unreal engine; the first being Matterfall. It would be four months later at Gamescom 2018, which would also coincide with the one-year anniversary of Housemarque’s proclamation of the death of arcade, that players would get their first look at a new trailer that served a taste of what the game actually is. Opening up with a player entering the map via an orbital drop pod, those who speculated a battle royale title from the studio were proven right. The ever-closing storm, abilities, jetpacks, and vehicles shown in the Gamescom trailer all seemed like typical battle royale fanfare for the most part. Personally, it looked like Stormdivers didn’t mix things up from its peers all too much aside from the aesthetic, which could have negatively impacted the game’s ability to draw and maintain an audience.
Ilari Kuittinen even saw that writing on the wall himself. In an article from April 2019 from VG247, Housemarque’s CEO spoke on how being slower to market than competitors, a lack of funding, and the new competition from Apex Legends didn't put the game in a favorable position to succeed. Respawn had launched Apex Legends just two months prior, and just like Fortnite, it was released for free. With plans in place to release Stormdivers at full retail price, this was a large hurdle to overcome. While Apex was an unknown quantity at that time, it was also from the same studio created by the devs who founded Infinity Ward in ‘02 and helped establish Call of Duty as the franchise we know today. Respawn had a history with the FPS genre, while Housemarque was entering their “new era.” In this same April 2019 article from VG247, Kuittinen did mention a secret, unannounced second project that had an unrevealed publisher attached. He expressed hope that it would be their biggest success, though it was a project that we wouldn’t see for another year.
Stormdivers had a very brief beta run in January of 2019, but for the rest of that year there was relative radio silence on the game and, for the most part, from the studio as a whole as well. That was until January of last year, before the dark times, in which Kuittinen took to a blog post to celebrate the studio’s 25-year anniversary and to announce that they were “focused on delivering their most ambitious game to date, putting every other project on hold, including the development of Stormdivers.” He continues, “It is great that the whole company can come together to deliver this game, which will define the next evolution of Housemarque.”
Just like that, Stormdivers came and went. To this day, it still has not been heard from. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. That secret, unannounced project with an unrevealed publisher that Kuittinen had mentioned before? It was unveiled five months later in June during Sony’s PlayStation 5 “The Future of Gaming” event where SIE was confirmed to be the previously unrevealed publisher. Within this event, we saw the reveal of the PlayStation 5, the first glimpse into the next generation of Sony. But fans also got to see what would officially be the next generation of Housemarque as well.
The long running relationship with Sony continued, and this time played a serious part in making the first step into Housemarque’s new era a big one. Returnal was officially announced with a two-minute trailer that oozed mysterious sci-fi terror vibes. The main protagonist, Selene, spoke on how she is trapped in a cycle, reliving her first moments on an alien world. With diverse biomes and haunting monolithic alien imagery flashing across the screen, the tone for Returnal was firmly set and the hype had started building within me and many others like a boiler fit to burst. Housemarque had just called it the biggest and most ambitious title they ever created. With clips that blew by as fast as the other imagery in the trailer, we could see this was going to be a third person shooter. And from Selene’s monologue, it teased roguelike elements.
Another six months would pass, and at the 2020 Game Awards, we would receive our official gameplay reveal along with a March 19th release date for the game. Utilizing the hardware within Sony’s new console and the haptic feedback provided by the DualSense, Returnal promised to be a visual powerhouse that offered lightning-fast loads and a level of immersion not yet felt before by players. This left players like myself chomping at the bit to be able to take on the role of Selene and see what this alien world was all about. However, in a tweet from the PlayStation Twitter account just a month later in January, it was announced that Returnal would be delayed six weeks to April 30th in order to “continue to polish the game to the level of quality players expect from Housemarque.”
To Returnal And Beyond
April 30th arrived, and for the first time in the almost twenty-six years of being a company, Housemarque’s very first non-arcade style game launched. Being the topic of discussion for weeks, Housemarque’s first step into their new era seemed to be a well-placed one that was executed with the precision and attention to detail the company had been known for throughout its history. While players have been a tad hesitant because of it, the game’s next-gen price point of seventy dollars didn’t seem to be a weight that it had to carry or worry about in terms of it affecting its reception. This is something that can be said for other early next-gen platform exclusives as well such as Insomniac’s Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. Currently sitting at an eighty-five on Metacritic, Returnal received high scores and praise across the board from outlets. Dan Tack of Game Informer called it “a relentless nightmare that’s a dream to play.” The game is dressed to the nines when it comes to visual fidelity, looking just as good (if not better) than most other AAA games on the market. This is largely in thanks to the internals of the PS5 and the current lack of next-gen exclusive software.
However, even though I unfortunately haven’t been able to go hands on for myself and feel what it’s like to play or what the haptic feedback provides for the overall experience, what I've seen of Returnal’s gameplay suggests that despite their claim of arcade’s death, Housemarque can't truly abandon their ties to their roots. With over two decades of experience and dedication to the refinement of the style, how could they? Especially if they’ve figured out a way to inject those stylings into something as stunning and big budget as Returnal. The procedural nature of the game does provide the randomness of your typical roguelike, but with a constant barrage of neon colored energy balls, abilities to utilize, and various weapons; the latter of which get reset and shuffled along with the arenas you traverse upon each death. Returnal seems to be just as much of a “think on your feet” strategic bullet hell as any of their prior releases. While it still personally remains to be seen, I can’t help but feel like, whether it’s intentional or not, this is such a clever and unique take that we don’t see a lot from a high budget, heavily marketed game; a marriage of AAA production and arcade roots combined with a mysterious and psychological narrative.
Though sales figures are just as much of a mysterious secret as the game’s narrative, Housemarque took to Twitter almost one month after launch to tote some stats about the player base. With nearly six million hours played, nine million player deaths, and a staggering one billion enemies slain in just a month, it was clear that Housemarque had something big on their hands. So much in fact that only one month after this Twitter post, Head of PlayStation Studios, Hermen Hulst, and the PlayStation Twitter page both tweeted marking a monumental moment for Housemarque by welcoming the studio into the ranks of PlayStation Studios. After the long-standing relationship with SIE, having a launch title with the last three generations of PlayStation, twenty-six years of independent game development, and consistently pushing the envelope, this felt like the culmination of it all. Housemarque had gone from a small indie studio built from the bones of Finland’s first game studios to a first party AAA studio. With a catalogue as competent as it is lengthy, and who’s dedication to their craft led them to being a beloved name, seeing them land directly under the wing of one the biggest names in the history of the industry is quite the Cinderella story.
When giving a statement on the PlayStation Blog, Kuittinen said that the acquisition “gives our studio a clear future and a stable opportunity to continue delivering gameplay centric approaches, while still experimenting with new methods of narrative delivery and pushing the boundaries of this modern artform.” Paired with the knowledge that day-to-day operations within Housemarque both in terms of development and management will be business as usual, it’s a good sign that the ecosystem around the studio will still be what it always has been. Not only that, but that the studio will still be able to comfortably push the envelope and discover ways to bring unique gaming experiences to their fans as they always have.
Housemarque has been creating addicting, beautiful, and innovative experiences for the entirety of their two and a half decades as a company. While it might seem strange that I've explored the entire history without extensively diving into their releases myself, the hands-off knowledge I had of Housemarque and the roll out of Returnal triggered curiosity I have not had in a long time. The idea of an indie studio releasing a game like Returnal and the prospect of their potential, and now historical, acquisition was enough to have me grinning ear to ear. This has only made my intrigue and my desire to play Returnal burn hotter. Ilari Kuittinen stated previously that the nail in the coffin to their commitment to arcade was mostly (if not entirely) monetary. The company needed to discover how to nurture their initial goal of creating innovative gaming experiences without financially suffering to the point of extinction. To have the secure backing of an absolute titan such as Sony is exactly that; a surefire guarantee that the struggles the studio had faced prior will be nothing more than a memory of a time that once was. All while being able to bring the team’s master craftsmanship forward with them - to innovate, create, and supply audiences with landmark, memorable experiences for what I hope is another twenty-six years or more.
Written by Justin Hyde