In an evening crammed with gory trailers for loud motion video games, one of many new reveals at The Sport Awards stood out for its mild nature: Coven of the Rooster Foot. The sport defied virtually each development of the night time: it was a single-player recreation, in a fantastic cel-shaded animation type, during which the primary character is an aged lady. This, it seems, is the primary new recreation from Bruce Straley, one of many co-directors of the unique The Final of Us, since he left Naughty Canine in 2017.
In an interview with Polygon, Straley spoke for the primary time about his shock exit from Naughty Canine, quickly after transport his final recreation with the corporate, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s Finish. After 18 years on the developer, Straley discovered himself combating a way of repetition because the studio settled into making, you recognize, Naughty Canine types of video games. (Within the twenty years prior, the corporate had additionally put out each Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter video games, earlier than selecting the cinematic motion of Uncharted and TLOU, the one recreation collection Naughty Canine has launched since 2007.)
“I felt like I was answering the same questions over and over again,” Straley instructed Polygon. “We were kind of in this paradigm of this style of game—that I was part of creating! But it felt like I’ve been in this position before. My brain isn’t good with that type of repetition. I need new problems to solve, I need new creative outlets. I’m not saying there wouldn’t be opportunities there, but couple that feeling with the idea that I was working really, really hard at something that wasn’t mine.”
Coven of the Rooster Foot is definitely a major step away. The primary recreation from Wildflower Interactive, a 16-person staff established in 2021, it describes itself as an “emotionally rich, stylized, single-player adventure.” You play as an aged witch referred to as Gertie, accompanied by a peculiar creature who will be taught from Gertie’s actions the right way to greatest help her of their journeys via woods, dungeons and bogs. The declare is that this unnamed beast can be an NPC dynamically formed by the way you play the sport.
Aged girls are terribly under-represented in video video games, virtually all the time confined to being evil antagonists—the one different instance of a playable aged lady I can consider is in Story of Tales’ 2008 tiny recreation The Graveyard (which I loved). Coven seems to be charming, if a bit too near Ori in its creature design (and vocal sounds for that matter) for my liking. There’s no launch date at this level, however you’ll be able to in fact already wishlist the game on Steam.
