The Callisto Protocol Developer Announces Roguelike Action Title Project Birdseye

I don’t envy anyone who sets out to make a roguelike. The genre presents a wide range of challenges that can make or break a game. How long should a run take? What’s the right amount of challenge? How do you keep people coming back for one more run? The answer to one of those questions could be the wrong solution for the others. It’s the most delicate of digital balancing acts that only a handful of studios have down to a science.

Shift Up, the South Korean studio responsible for the upcoming Stellar Blade, appears to be hiring for a new project in Unreal Engine.

Of the many gaming subscriptions out there, the $11.99 per month Humble Choice is one of the good ones. That’s partially because Choice lets you keep and play PC games you received through the service, even if you choose to unsubscribe later on (unlike Xbox and PlayStation’s respective subscriptions). There are other benefits that I’ll explain below, but I won’t bury the lede any further.

Yellow Brick Games, an independent studio established by Dragon Age creator Mike Laidlaw and Ubisoft veterans back in November 2020, has officially announced Eternal Strands, its self-published single-player third-person fantasy action adventure game coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam. It will support English audio, and English and French text, with other languages to be announced. A release date was not announced.

Now that Cyberpunk 2077 is in the best place it can be, and Phantom Liberty has been pushed out into the wild, questions are being asked about what CD Projekt Red's next big release is going to be. It's been incredibly transparent with its development process, as a result of trying to make up for Cyberpunk 2077's launch shenanigans, and now the studio has shared its development pipeline on social media for us to see exactly what it's working on.

In February 2020, Mike Laidlaw, the former creative director of the Dragon Age franchise, co-founded the independent studio Yellow Brick Games in Quebec City, Canada. Today, a teaser trailer for the company’s debut title was revealed, with more information set to be released next month.

Recently on the GI Microcast, GamesIndustry.biz founder Christopher Dring discussed falling sales for Xbox in Europe and how the “majority” of its titles would come to PlayStation 5 at some point. During GDC 2024, he also spoke to different developers about the rumored PS5 Pro, whose specs recently leaked. The verdict? “I didn’t meet a single person that understood the point of it.”

Publisher Headup Games and developer Dvora Studio have announced side-scrolling survival horror game The Coma 2B: Catacomb for PC (Steam). It will launch in Q3 2024.

Publisher Team17 and developer Windwalk Gmes have announced Camelot-set cooperative roguelike action game SWORN for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Switch, and PC (Steam). It will launch in 2024. Registration for a closed play test is available now.

Team Ninja returns with the PlayStation 5 exclusive title Rise of the Ronin. While there’s an understandably heavy influence of the Nioh franchise in the developer’s latest title, this action RPG forgoes monsters and magic for a straight-up samurai adventure set during the Bakumatsu of the Edo period. Resultantly, there’s a lot of history (and fiction) to explore in 19th century Japan.

Striking Distance Studios, the developer behind 2022's The Callisto Protocol, has revealed what is internally called Project Birdeye, a top-down spin-off set in the same universe. A small team will continue to develop the fast-paced roguelike while the rest of the studio works on another full-scale game, and we got a brief trailer showing off some stylised action.

After channelling the atmosphere and gory terror of Dead Space (though alas, not its reception) in 2022’s sci-fi horror shooter, The Callisto Protocol is apparently now looking to the likes of Hades to inspire a new roguelike spin-off set in its universe, currently codenamed Project Birdseye.