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Absurd Ventures, the company formed by longtime Rockstar mainstay Dan Houser a few years ago, has announced that it’s formed a fresh studio under its umbrella. The studio, called Absurd Marin, comes with a starting staff of several former developers of Ascendant Studios’ ill-fated Immortals of Aveum.
Yep, that’s the Immortals of Aveum that came out last year amid a whole barrage of other interesting things, and, for the million reasons unfortunate things like this can happen, didn’t deliver the sales the fairly lofty budget the execs had pencilled in for it led them to expect. This was followed by some layoffs at Ascendant, which obviously no one with sense, no matter how they felt about the game itself, wanted to see.
Now, Immortals’ director and Ascendant co-founder Bret Robbins will be leading Absurd Marin (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz), which is made up of “about 20 developers from the core team behind Immortals of Aveum” as of writing, and will be working on a “story-driven adventure game”.
As of right now, the game sounds like it’s in the early stages of development, and therefore hasn’t has its name announced. It’s separate from the game that Absurd Ventures itself is working on, which is based on a universe called A Better Paradise, the same name you’ll find on a 12-part audio series Absurd has been working on.
Back in May, some job listings potentially offered a better idea of what that game from the main Absurd studio might vaguely look like or involve, though the company’s otherwise kept it pretty under wraps thus far.
Even if we’ll probably wait a while for more info about it, it’s nice to see some Immortals devs being given a chance to have a crack at making something else after Ascendant laid off “about 45%” of its workforce this time last year, following its magic shooter being described by one ex-Ascendant employee as a thing that no one bought.
“Not in years have I seen a game thrown out to die as hard as Immortals of Aveum,” our own Connor Makar wrote in his review of Immortals, “Developed by Ascendant Studios, it’s a game that hopes to combine some good ol’ fashioned FPS action with some slick spell-slinging. An interesting pitch for sure, but sadly not one that manifests itself in an especially exhilarating fashion. Immortals of Aveum is a middling adventure, which just so happens to be releasing at a time when several industry-shaking games are releasing.”