Related Articles
“Google is horrible.”
This was among the first things that Raccoon Logic creative director Alex Hutchinson said to me as I settled in to learn about his studio’s newest game, Revenge of the Savage Planet. He followed this up with a promise to elaborate further as the presentation progressed. I would ultimately be shocked by how much of the nearly two-hour showcase and interview would be about this topic.
Raccoon Logic consists of a bunch of Montreal-based developers that, after working together on games like Assassin’s Creed and the Batman Arkham series, went on to form Typhoon Studios in the late 2010s. In early 2020, that studio put out Journey to the Savage Planet, an action-adventure game that was largely met with praise. Later that year, the studio was bought by Google to help bolster its video-game-streaming service Stadia.
In a matter of months–and nearly two years before the corporate conglomerate would shut down Stadia entirely–Typhoon Studios, along with all the other gaming teams that Google built from the ground up, was closed. Following this major blow, most of Typhoon regrouped to form Raccoon Logic, and set off on a mission to create not only the studio’s first game, but a new entry in their Savage Planet series: Revenge of the Savage Planet. And yet, creating a new studio and brand-new title was only part of the challenge. According to studio head Reid Schneider, getting the Savage Planet IP back from Google took even longer than Typhoon’s tenure as one of the company’s first-party studios.
While studio closures are now a relatively common occurrence in the industry, both the team and the public at large were stunned by how quickly Google’s gaming prospects collapsed in on itself. The company is notorious for killing off products with swiftness and precision–there is a whole website dedicated to the long list of services it has axed over the years–but the size and scope of Stadia made it seem that the company might have given it more of a chance to gain some traction. Instead, it was tossed in the trash as unceremoniously as Google+ or Google Reader. And all of this forms the core of Revenge of the Savage Planet’, the team at Raccoon Logic pouring their experience working for the company into the game.
“We were a bit more upset, so it’s a bit darker,” says Hutchinson. In the Savage Planet sequel, the first game’s corporation Kindred Aerospace has been gobbled up by an even-bigger conglomerate, Alta Interglobal. As a newly acquired employee, you’ve been sent on an intergalactic quest to help secure worlds for your new parent company. However, by the time you awaken from cryosleep 100 years later, you find out you’ve not only been laid off, but so has your entire team back home, stranding you in the deep recesses of space.
While the game’s narrative might have punches of more satirical, even darker comedy, Revenge of the Savage Planet’s visuals are just as colorful and vibrant as its predecessor. However, instead of exploring a single savage planet, players will be traveling between multiple.
While visually the game is clearly more of what the first title offered, Unreal Engine 5 provides a noticeable graphical upgrade over Journey to the Savage Planet, and the team is hoping that the game’s vivid fidelity will offer a nice contrast to the wealth of “dark and gritty” sci-fi games that currently dominate the medium. Another way the two games differ from one another is that the upcoming release is third-person–a fun animation in the early moments of Revenge literally shocking the player character out of first person into the new point of view.
The shift to third-person not only makes the semi-open world, puzzle-filled level design much more manageable, but allows for the game to have an even more distinct personality as well. The jaunty movement animation of the player character consistently brought a smile to my face during the game’s hands-off demo.
This heightened level of amusing detail was consistent throughout the presentation of the game, with a particular moment where the player was swallowed by a large, orb-shaped creature and then managed to burst through from the inside by disco dancing, causing me to actually laugh out loud. Needless to say, if the first Savage Planet’s humor and charm was something that endeared you to the game, Revenge is doubling, even tripling, down on that element.
This all goes hand in hand with a lot of the game’s new mechanics, such as various substances changing up the friction of a planet’s surface–if an alien explodes in a mound of goo, prepare to slide around if you step in it. Aliens can also be captured via a new lasso tool and then sent back to your crash pad, a customizable base that you can establish on each planet. Captured aliens can help the player complete certain objectives, and in some cases, unlock new cosmetics, something that the team can now feature thanks to the game’s third-person nature.
The game features a main story and two major side quests, with one about getting Kindred out from under the clutches of Alta. However, the team at Raccoon Logic wanted to put a greater emphasis on the player’s story rather than the campaign that carries you throughout the game. Players will unlock planets in a specific order but can return to previously unlocked worlds anytime, especially as they gain new tools that can open up once inaccessible areas. While the game features five planets, we were only told about four, as the fifth is a secret that contains the true ending of the game and will force players to explore the rest of the worlds deeply in order to gain access to it.
On top of visual and gameplay enhancements, the team has added in various quality-of-life improvements. Those who played the first game will be happy to hear that Revenge features a map, which was the main complaint railed against Journey according to the devs. Journey’s lack of a map was due to the fact that the team didn’t want players to “be playing in the map,” but this time around, they believe they’ve struck a good balance that will provide utility, but not have players simply checking off points on the atlas.
Revenge features a jetpack for added mobility, something the team wanted to have in the first game but was axed by an anonymous Microsoft employee, according to Hutchinson, the conglomerate providing funding on Journey to the Savage Planet. Later in the game, there will be a “Spider-Man-esque” grapple that is apparently rather game-breaking but the team thought was too fun to leave out.
What’s not in Revenge of the Savage Planet is almost as interesting as what is. In order to maintain a sustainable studio that is devoid of crunch, Raccoon Logic wanted to get the game into a playable alpha phase as quickly as possible and iterate from there, rather than spending an extended period testing out ideas and then rushing development as launch approached. There were originally some more linear, Zelda-esque dungeons, but the team felt they took away from the creative, spontaneous nature of the game’s design, so they scaled those areas back. External base-building was scaled back as well. While you can get very granular in decorating the interiors of your crash pad, new structures you add to the compound simply drop out of the sky, almost like a “reward” for the player denoted the devs. The team also had some ideas for vehicles in the game, but they ultimately didn’t make the cut. However, Hutchinson did tease their potential inclusion in DLC down the line.
Despite not being able to go hands-on with the game, it was clear that it’s in a really solid place, with the dev team confirming that they’re mostly in a polishing phase at this point in development. While they don’t have a solid release date outside the first half of 2025 window, they stated that they’re eager to ship the game and confident in their target. The team also confirmed that the game will not be a full-price title, but they’re still figuring out the sweet spot for Revenge of the Savage Planet when it comes to pricing.
When the game does launch at that reduced price, it will be coming to PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
