3 years 11 months ago
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Image & Form, creator of the SteamWorld series, has announced a brand new game, The Gunk, for Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and PC. It will arrive in fall 2021.
Starring two space haulers who chance upon a planet teeming with life, the third-person adventure will see you encountering undiscovered alien life and discovering the secrets of a lost civilisation, while cleaning up the titular Gunk, an alien parasite that's infested the planet. I'm getting almost Luigi's Mansion / Mario Sunshine vibes.
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It's a major switch for more ways that one for the Swedish developer. For a start, this marks the studio's first ever 3D game. Image & Form has also been most closely associated with Nintendo over the years, launching every game in the SteamWorld series first on a Nintendo platform, so a switch to an Xbox exclusive marks a new chapter for the developer.
In a press release, CEO Brjann Sigurgeirsson explains: “A bit into the development process it became obvious that The Gunk would be very hardware-demanding. We’ve always managed to keep our games lean, but The Gunk is all bells and whistles about to explode spectacularly. We had to make a choice: either we quiet it down considerably, or we go talk to the guys with the most powerful hardware. We decided to go talk to the guys with the most powerful hardware.”
Perhaps this switch shouldn't be a surprise, however - Image & Form has made its name on trying out new ideas almost every time it releases a new game, with the SteamWorld series alone encompassing platformers, tactics games, and a card-based RPG. We awarded he last SteamWorld release, SteamWorld Quest, an 8.6 review, saying its "card-based RPG combat offers an insane amount of choice, making it as flexible as it is fun."
Check out everything announced at the Xbox Games Showcase.
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Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.