Sales for Returnal were estimated to be around half a million, but that was 18 months ago before the game reaped a number of awards. Sony calls it a “mega nit”, which is not something you can say about many Housemarque titles, as much as we like them.


“We did have a lot of cinematic and literary influences. I think things like Lovecraft, and cosmic horror in all its different manifestations, was one really big influence. Dark sci-fi in all these different forms was really influential for us as well.” explains game director Harry Krueger. “I can’t avoid mentioning things like Aliens, Event Horizon, or even Prometheus more recently, and all for different reasons. I think it was about just picking and mixing a lot of different types of creative sensibilities and elements while reinforcing the story we were trying to tell.” Housemarque was also keen to stick to their guns in terms of house style, despite the new scope. With that came a commitment to “bullet hell”, a thing regularly seen in the arcade scene, but rarely in games with Returnal’s tone and scale. This led to a rather unique look for Returnal among its PS5 contemporaries, as focus was put on keeping things not just fast and explosive, but readable at a glance. “One of the key goals that we had was actually to try to preserve that arcade spirit when shifting to this big budget production. We’ve established a fairly unique kind of explosive, neon infused arcade action at


Housemarque,” said Krueger. “I think one of our main goals for Returnal was to take all of those sensibilities and just crank them up to 13. So it was really just ‘How


October/November 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 55


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