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Apogee Software, the American game publisher with a rich history in ’90s games is rebranding and relaunching as Apogee Entertainment. According to a GamesIndustry.biz interview with one of the company’s founders, Scott Miller, the purpose of this resurrection is to “reclaim our title as the original indie publisher.”
Apogee Software might as well have been a household name for anyone in the games industry during the ’90s. The publisher was the starting point for multiple iconic franchises, including Duke Nukem, Prey, Wolfenstein, and Max Payne. The company also provided assistance to developers that play a major role in today’s gaming world, namely Remedy Entertainment (Control, Alan Wake, Quantum Break) and id Software (Doom Eternal).
The history of Apogee Software gets a little more complicated in the mid-’90s. The company rebranded as 3D Realms in 1994 with the Apogee Software name and logo being sold to Terry Nagy, a colleague of Miller.
Today’s second rebranding of Apogee was a year in the works, according to Miller. In the same interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Miller revealed that Nagy had approached him last year with the idea of bringing Apogee back. The pair share a common goal — bring Apogee to the forefront of the indie game publishing business. “We’re working with indie developers again and cherry picking what we think are the diamonds in the rough,” Miller said. “And there are a lot of diamonds out there.”
To that end, Apogee Entertainment has already put together a showcase of its upcoming titles for 2021 and 2022 and revealed its first project.
Hosted by Jon St. John, the original voice behind Duke Nukem, the showcase provided brief snippets of games currently in development that will be published by Apogee. Currently, the publisher has a zombie title, a first-person shooter, and an apparent Commander Keen remaster in the works, among other projects.
The first project revealed by Apogee is Residual, a survival platformer being developed by Orangepixel. The game will place players in the shoes of a space-faring explorer who crashlands on alien planets. Using their wits and the technology left behind by countless past civilizations, players will have to survive the inhospitable worlds. Residual is set to launch this fall on the Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.
