Casual and cute exploration in Revenge of the Savage Planet | practical preview

While I was in Los Angeles for The Game Awards, I had the opportunity to check out some trailers in a parking lot. There, once they turned on the power, I could see a nice new game, Revenge of the Savage Planet.

Raccoon Logic’s satirical sci-fi adventures will arrive in May 2025 for PC and consoles. The Montreal-based game studio showed off the game as part of its PC gaming program and released a new trailer showcasing the return of Martin Tweed, CEO of Kindred Aerospace.

The game is a sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet, which debuted in 2020 from publisher 505 Games. That game had quite a journey. It was the debut project from developer Typhoon Studios, started by Alex Hutchinson, game director of Assassin’s Creed III and Far Cry 4 at Ubisoft. It was a weird comical sci-fi adventure game with bright colors inspired by Men in Black and Ghostbusters. In the game, you are sent to explore a planet and see if it is suitable for human habitation.

Google acquired Typhoon Studios in 2019 and then launched Journey to the Savage Planet on Google Stadia, the ill-fated cloud gaming service. On launch day, February 1, 2021, Google also shut down Typhoon. The former members of Typhoon founded Raccoon Logic in August 2021 and later acquired the intellectual property rights to Savage Planet. Raccoon Logic gathered about 30 people, got funding from Tencent, and built the new game for less than $10 million.

Tweed’s new enemy is Gunther Harrison, CEO of Alta Interglobal, a rival corporation to Kindred Aerospace. Once again, a scientist is sent to explore and colonize a new planet, but mid-trip the scientist is fired by Alta Interglobal, who decided that the mission to colonize the distant star system is too expensive. Then the ship breaks down on the new planet. Abandoned by your corporation, your job is to survive and once again find your way back home.

Hands-on preview

I started playing the tutorial and it was pretty easy to master. Looking at the colorful surroundings, I had to look for resources in animals, plants, minerals, and more. Then I took them back to the 3D printer and printed objects. The planet is full of fauna and comical bugs. And there’s a lot of sticky stuff that can get you stuck while you’re going through it.

I learned how to use the scanner, which can tell you what you’re dealing with and how it can help you. You can step on small creatures and they turn into green goo. Some of the creatures have resources. You can kick these ball-like creatures called Brainards and watch them bounce and crash. Every time I was on a mission to do something with my 3D printer, a navigation marker would appear on the horizon so I could search for the items I needed. If I got lost, I had to click the right stick to see where my target was.

After learning the tutorial, I went to a cutscene in the middle of the game, where I could now jump far and climb. Across the planet with its light gravity, I jumped in the air from one large rock to another. I encountered some purple wolf-like creatures that got angry at me. They chased me for a long time and I had to keep jumping to escape. I thought they were tired of chasing me but they still chased me. Then I climbed to the top of a rock and jumped over their heads. It turned out that that was his weak point.

One of the interesting things is that there is more than one planet to visit in this game, which makes the name of the game seem a little inaccurate. In fact, you will have to survive on four wild planets and scan everything you find on them. The flora is very different on all planets.

When it comes to alien creatures, you can use your gun to shoot them or capture them with a lasso. You can capture them and place them in pens. I enjoyed the game and its ridiculous colors and cute sense of humor. Looking forward to seeing more.

Interview with the game designer.

After finishing the demo, I did an interview with Steven Masters, game designer at Raccoon Logic. He told me that the first game did well because it was relatively rare as a comedy in a market full of serious games. What was the mission of the sequel?

“We just wanted to make it bigger,” Masters said.

He added: “We wanted to continue the idea of ​​telling a corporate satire, have a lot of fun and humor within the game and also be a little more open. One of our key decisions was to go from first person to third person. It really allows us to bring more humor to the character and improve some of the platforming. You have a little more personality within the character.”

When the character runs, he bends his legs and raises his knees in the air, as if he were marching. Masters said it sounds silly, but he was inspired by people who have to run through the waves at the beach.

The game will have approximately 15 to 20 hours of play. Depending on your preference for pioneering, Revenge of the Savage Planet can be played solo or cooperatively (either split-screen/couch co-op or online), with cross-play across multiple platforms.

There were two different endings to Journey to the Savage Planet, and this one will have three since there are multiple narrative threads, Masters said.

It seems like a lot of work for a team of 30 people with a budget of less than $10 million, but the team has a lot of experience in different companies.

There has been a lot of confusion in the games. AI has not been useful in the project so far. But somehow this 30-person study is doing well.

“We are really focused on keeping a focused and efficient machine. We’re not trying to expand and create another game-as-a-service for 500 people. We just wanted to do something small and focused that was really representative of something we wanted to play, that we hope resonates with our players.”

The team has been testing much of the game with a regular group of testers.

“We are all very passionate and we all know our business,” Masters said. “We can execute at a much faster pace but also in a more relaxed manner.”