It didn’t take long at all for Raphael Colantonio’s WolfEye Games to show off a bit more about their upcoming immersive sim, as promised mere days ago. Now, while we don’t have the title just yet, we do have a wealth of other information, and the alpha is coming.
In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Colantonio talked about the game at some length, revealing that it’s set in an alternative 1900s America, and it’s using the Wild West backdrop to create something new and essentially unrecognizable:
“I think the big distinction we’re making here is, as far as genre literature goes, this is more like sci-fi literature than it is Wild West or whatever,” Colantonio told Eurogamer. “I think the Western is a genre of literature that people associate with certain types of scenarios like revenge or duels in the streets. We don’t have any of that.”
The Wild West, then, is basically the core visual style the game will build its own thing from. Colantonio describes it as a “steampunk outtake 1900s” sort of thing. Early visual certainly illustrate as much, like the below.
You can sign up to test Raphael Colantonio’s next ImSim right now
The developer also described it as “somewhere closer to Fallout” in terms of its RPG elements, especially if compared to Dishonored and Prey. It’s a promising take, if you’re a fan of the oddly oblique immersive sim niche. Those who are particularly keen on seeing it in action might wish to sign up for the game’s upcoming alpha testing phase, which you can do via the official website.
According to WolfEye Studios’ executive producer Julien Roby, this is basically what the team did with Weird West, though they did so too far along the production pipeline: “We didn’t really have time to act on the most major feedback,” he explained to Eurogamer. This alpha should, therefore, engage the community early on and help players communicate with WolfEye while there’s still time to make meaningful, mechanical changes.
It’s particularly important that WolfEye Studios has a whole slew of tenured ImSim professionals working with Colantonio to make this mystery game as good as it possibly could be: “It’s the same formation of people [from Prey and Dishonored] who are now with us, so we already know what we’re doing.”
The mystery game’s art director, for example, is Emmanuel Petit, who worked on Prey as the lead visual designer. Before that, Petit was Dishonored‘s level artist, which means he’s got plenty of pedigree by now. At the same time, WolfEye still counts only about 60 employees in total, which means this won’t be an AAA-scope project in any sense of the word.
In summary, then, ImSim fans have something new and interesting to look forward to, but it won’t be coming out anytime soon. The important bit is that it seemingly is coming, though, and with WolfEye at the helm, there’s much to be excited about.
