Recently, reports emerged that Bloober Team was working on three unannounced projects based on funding received from the Creative Europe Media Programme in the European Commission, with all three projects appearing with brief details on the programme’s website, but the Polish studio has clarified via a statement provided to IGN that that information is incomplete and outdated.
The information on Creative Europe Media’s website described three Bloober Team projects under production codenames- H20, a Layers of Fear sequel; Dum Spiro, a game set during the Second World War with a young boy imprisoned in a Jewish-Polish ghetto being the protagonist; and Black, a first person horror game in a medival setting that’s been attacked by aliens.
According to Bloober Team CMO Tomasz Gawlikowski, H20 actually turned out to be Layers of Fear 2, rather than a third game in the series as it may have seemed initially. Meanwhile, the other two projects have changed significantly as well- the idea for Dum Spiro has been shelved, since the developer doesn’t feel it can deliver a game that is “appropriately sensitive to the topic and commercially viable at the same time”.
“After numerous iterations of Dum Spiro, we’ve concluded we can’t at the moment deliver it in a form that is appropriately sensitive to the topic and commercially viable at the same time,” Gawlikowski said. “In short, Dum Spiro is no longer in active development at the moment.”
Meanwhile Black is still in development, but has changed significantly from what the game’s information in the aforementioned report described. “The initial idea for Black has also been shelved, and while we’re still developing a game under this codename, it’s now a much different project than what you could read on the web in the past few days,” Gawlikowski explained.
Of course, there’s also been plenty of speculation of late that Bloober Team is also working on a Silent Hill reboot, with the developer recently having entered into a strategic partnership with Konami. While Gawlkikowski didn’t comment on that, he did say the the studio is currently working on two projects- one of these is in full development, while the other is in pre-production, and both are apparently bigger in scope than The Medium, which was already Bloober Team’s biggest game when it launched earlier this year.
“At Bloober Team we have two active internal projects, one in the production phase and one in the pre-production phase,” he said. “Both are going to be bigger in scope than The Medium, however, neither of them is based on themes or premises that have been circulating online in the last days.”
In all likelihood, the game being developed under the codename Black is the project that is currently in development, while the rumoured Silent Hill game is in pre-production. Of course, that is just speculation for now. All we can do is wait for some official word.
