“Google is terrible.”
Those were the first words Raccoon Logic creative director Alex Hutchinson said to me when I sat down to learn about the studio’s latest game, Revenge of the Savage Planet. He then promised to elaborate further as the presentation progressed. Ultimately, I was struck by how much of the nearly two hours of presentations and interviews was devoted to this subject.
Raccoon Logic is a group of Montreal-based developers who formed Typhoon Studios in the late 2010s after working together on games such as the Assassin’s Creed and Batman Arkham series. In early 2020, the studio launched Journey to the Savage Planet, a critically acclaimed action-adventure game. Later that year, the studio was acquired by Google to help bolster its video game streaming service Stadia.
A few months later, and nearly two years before the conglomerate shut down Stadia outright, Typhoon Studios shut down, along with every other gaming team Google had built from the ground up. After this major blow, most of Typhoon re-formed Raccoon Logic and set out on a mission to create not only the studio’s first game, but a new entry in their Savage Planet series: Savage Revenge of the Planet. However, creating a new studio and an entirely new game is only part of the challenge. Studio head Reid Schneider said that wresting the Savage Planet IP from Google took even longer than Typhoon’s tenure as one of the company’s first-party studios.
While studio closures are relatively common in the industry now, both the team and the public at large have been shocked by how quickly Google’s gaming landscape has collapsed. The company is notorious for killing products quickly and accurately — there’s an entire website dedicated to the long list of services it’s axed over the years — but the scale and scope of Stadia makes it feel like the company may have given up. It has a better chance of gaining some traction. Instead, it was thrown unceremoniously into the trash like Google+ or Google Reader. All of this forms the core of Revenge of the Savage Planet, with the Raccoon Logic team bringing their experience working for the company into the game.
“We were a little distracted, so it was a little dark,” Hutchinson said. In the sequel to Savage Planet, the Kindred Aerospace company from the first game is swallowed up by the larger conglomerate Alta Interglobal. As a new employee, you are sent on an interstellar exploration mission to help your new parent company defend the world. However, when you wake up from cryosleep 100 years later, you find that not only have you been fired, but so have your entire team, stranding you in the depths of space.
While the game’s narrative may be more satirical and even darkly comedic, Revenge of the Savage Planet’s visuals are just as colorful and vibrant as its predecessor. However, rather than exploring one savage planet, players will be traveling between multiple planets.
While visually the game clearly looks more like the first game, Unreal Engine 5 offers a significant graphical upgrade compared to Journey to the Savage Planet, and the team hopes the game’s vivid fidelity will match the richness The “dark” elements are in sharp contrast. Another difference between the two games is that the upcoming game is a third-person game – there’s a fun cutscene early on in Revenge that really puts the player character into a new perspective from first-person.
The switch to third-person not only makes the semi-open-world, puzzle-filled level design more manageable, but also gives the game a more distinct personality. During the game’s hands-off demonstrations, the player character’s cheerful motion animations never failed to bring a smile to my face.
This highly entertaining detail is consistent throughout the game’s presentation, with one particular moment where the player is swallowed by a giant ball-like creature and then bursts out of it via a disco dance that made me actually laugh out loud Speak up. Needless to say, if the humor and charm of the first Savage Planet was what drew you to the game, Revenge doubles or even triples that element.
This all ties in with the game’s many new mechanics, such as various substances that change the friction of a planet’s surface – if the alien explodes into a pile of goo, be prepared to slide around if you step on it. Aliens can also be captured via the new lasso tool and returned to your crash pad, a customizable base you can build on each planet. Captured aliens can help players complete certain objectives and, in some cases, unlock new cosmetics, which the team can now offer due to the game’s third-person nature.
The game has a main story and two main side quests, one of which is about rescuing Kindred from Alta’s clutches. However, the team at Raccoon Logic wanted to put more emphasis on the player’s story rather than the campaign that runs throughout the game. Players will unlock planets in a specific order, but can return to previously unlocked worlds at any time, especially as they gain new tools that can open up once inaccessible areas. While the game has five planets, we’re only told about four, as the fifth planet is a secret that contains the game’s true ending and will force players to delve deeper into other parts of the world in order to access it.
In addition to visual and gameplay enhancements, the team has also added various quality-of-life improvements. Those who played the first game will be happy to hear that Revenge has a map, which according to the developer was a major complaint about Journey. Journey’s lack of maps was because the team didn’t want players to “play in a map,” but this time around, they believe they’ve struck a good balance that provides utility without making players just check the map Just click.
The Hutchinson Group, which bankrolled Journey to the Savage Planet, said Revengeance features a jetpack for added mobility, something the team wanted to have in the first game, but this was revealed by an anonymous Microsoft employee. Canceled. Late in the game, there’s going to be a “Spider-Man-esque” fight, which is obviously pretty game-breaking, but the team thinks it’s too fun to ignore.
What’s not in Revenge of the Savage Planet is almost as interesting as what is in it. In order to maintain a sustainable studio without overtime, Raccoon Logic wants to get the game into a playable alpha stage as quickly as possible and iterate from there, rather than spending a long time testing ideas and then rushing development as launch approaches. There were originally some more linear Zelda-esque dungeons, but the team felt they took away the creativity and spontaneity of the game’s design, so they reduced the size of these areas. External base construction has also been curtailed. While you can decorate the interior of the crash pad in great detail, new structures added to the complex just fall from the sky, almost like a “reward” for the developer’s players. The team also had some ideas for vehicles in the game, but ultimately nothing came of it. However, Hutchinson did reveal that they might be included in DLC.
Despite not being able to get hands-on with the game, it’s clear that it’s in a very solid position, with the development team confirming that they’re currently in the polishing stages of development. While they don’t have a firm release date outside of the first half of 2025, they say they’re eager to release the game and confident in their goals. The team also confirmed that the game won’t be full-priced, but they’re still looking for the sweet spot in terms of pricing for Revenge of the Savage Planet.
When the game does launch at a reduced price, it will come to PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
