Among Raccoon Logic’s founders are Alex Hutchinson who co-founded Typhoon Studios and worked as its creative director; Reid Schneider who was the studio head and takes up the same role here (along with executive producer); technical director Yannick Simard who now works as CTO; former Typhoon Studios art head Erick Bilodeau who is now art director; and former principal technical designer Marc-Antoine Lussier, now technical design director. Hutchinson noted that the team was “excited to be back in the indie space, making the games we truly believe in with an amazing new team.”

“The early investment from Tencent is a huge boost, meaning we can do significant work on our own before we start talking to publishers. We love systemic games, games with a sense of humor and a big heart, and games with strong flavors that get reactions from players. We’re going to keep pushing on those ideas and we’ll have something to show soon!”

Schneider added that, “We’re super excited to continue the work we started at Typhoon Studios, and build upon the Journey to the Savage Planet franchise in the future. We would like to thank our partners at Tencent, Google, and 505 for their support. We’re fortunate to have put together an amazing team, many of whom helped build Savage Planet, and we’ve added some great new talent as well.”

Though its next project isn’t confirmed, Raccoon Logic is keen on providing “new adventures” in the action adventure space. This could mean a direct sequel to Journey of the Savage Planet or even a follow-up in the same vein. Time will tell so stay tuned for more details.

Journey to the Savage Planet is currently available for Xbox One, PS4, PC, Nintendo Switch and Google Stadia. Check out our review here.

Typhoon Studios’ sci-fi adventure title Journey to the Savage Planet launched on Stadia earlier this month, but the game isn’t exactly in the best state on the cloud platform right now. From crashes to freezing issues, playing the game on Google’s service hasn’t exactly been easy- but fixing it is looking like it’s going to be an even more complicated task.

Recently, Reddit user BansRuns made a thread about their troubles with the games, and how any and all entities attached to the game seem to have no idea what’s going on with it. Upon being notified of the issues, Google said at first that they were working with “a publishing partner”, though further communication asked the player to get in touch with the publisher instead.

505 Games, who published the game on PC and consoles, pointed out that they are not the game’s publisher on Stadia. Google acquired Journey to the Savage Planet developer Typhoon Studios back in December 2019, and they themselves published the game on Stadia. That, of course, throws another wrench into the works, given that Typhoon Studios and Google’s Stadia Games and Entertainment label were both recently shut down. Which means there’s no one left to fix the game, even though it launched on Stadia on the same exact day that Google announced the closure of its first parties. As 505 Games points out, the game’s code and its data are owned by Google.

It’s a complete mess alright, and goes to show once again how short-sighted Google have been on multiple fronts, and how horribly they’ve mismanaged their exit from the industry as a first party developer. Let’s just hope they can figure out a way to fix a game made by a studio they owned, and that they published as recently as less than a month ago.

Typhoon Studios’ first person sci-fi adventure Journey to the Savage Planet launched last month, bringing with it its charming humour and exploration-focused gameplay. Like with most games that launch these days – especially indies – one question that’s been levelled at its developers quite regularly is- will it come to the Switch? And it’s looking likelier and likelier that it might.

Two retailers have listed a Switch release for Journey to the Savage Planet- Deep Discount and Amazon Japan, both of them mentioning a placeholder release date of June 30th. In the absence of an official announcement, it’s best to take this with a grain of salt for now, but it’s worth noting that retailer listings do tend to be early indicators of announcements in some cases.

Recently, Journey to the Savage Planet creative director and co-creator of Typhoon Studios Alex Hutchinson told us a Switch port of the game is something they’re “looking into”, and that it would be “a perfect fit”. Read more on that through here.

Journey to the Savage Planet is currently available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. You can get more info on the game via our recent interview with Hutchinson through here.

It’s only February but the hype around the Xbox Series X and PS5, the next generation of consoles, is palpable. Whether it’s waiting for prices or more details (especially from Sony who has yet to showcase their console), the cycle of hype is inextricably linked to how little we actually know. However, one topic that’s been discussed a bit more lately is backwards compatibility.

While Sony admitted that backwards compatibility was still in the works, Microsoft is committed to supporting a large number of Xbox One and Xbox 360 titles for its next-gen console. How much impact does the feature actually have though? We spoke to Typhoon Studios creative director and co-founder Alex Hutchinson, who recently released Journey to the Savage Planet, about the same.

Concerning the impact that backwards compatibility has on both developers and consumers, Hutchinson said, “Sony and Microsoft seem to be thinking about releasing more updated hardware more often, like phones, and so they need to make sure software can stick around or they’ll do terrible things to devs… but really, it just means we need to do more work supporting more platforms, which removes one of the best things about consoles: a reliable box with a long shelf life.”

While it sounds obvious, it’s still interesting to think about how a developer has to approach the issue. In the long run, instead of devoting resources to a new title or new content, a developer would have to focus on supporting more and more platforms for its existing titles. The benefits of working on consoles over PC begin to blur in that regard.

Hutchinson was also asked about the PS5’s haptic-enabled controller and whether it will be a significant addition or a novelty. He said, “Just a novelty to me, like the analog buttons of the past or a racing wheel.”

The PS5 and Xbox Series X are both slated to release this holiday season. As for Journey to the Savage Planet, it’s currently available for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. You can check out our review for the game here.

NOTE: This interview was conducted prior to the game’s launch.

"We wanted a beautiful, exotic, colorful alien world that is hand crafted and filled with secrets and surprises. If you didn’t feel good moving around in it, then players would just drop it and move on to the next game."

Journey to the Savage Planet definitely seems like a game that places an immense emphasis on exploration but how much of the experience is narratively driven?

I like to think of the narrative in Journey to the Savage Planet as something you can explore rather than something we use to drive the player. The story asks questions, your exploration generates quests, and then finishing those quests and exploring every nook and cranny will unlock various emails, videos, messages and more that can give you answers to those story questions.

Can you talk about the various tools players will acquire throughout the game, and how these will aid in and change traversal?

You find all kinds of weird objects you can carry and throw with your left hand to open doors, dissolve resin, blow things up and more. You will also build double, triple and quadruple jumps, boost jumps, the ability to stomp, a grapple gun and more!

How crucial to the overall experience was it to nail the alien aesthetic and atmosphere that players will be traversing?

It’s critical! We wanted a beautiful, exotic, colorful alien world that is hand crafted and filled with secrets and surprises. If you didn’t feel good moving around in it, then players would just drop it and move on to the next game.

How large are the game’s individual explorable environments?

Big! But not too big. We are only a small team, so we prioritized density over sheer scale: there’s lots to find packed into every nook and cranny.

How much diversity can players expect to see from the game’s unique biomes?

There are many little micro biomes packed into the big four! Snowy areas, forests, caves, lava zones, fungal forests! There’s lots to find.

Speaking of diversity, when it comes to the creatures players will encounter, how much do they differ from each other? Are some of them combat-oriented?

There are three basic archetypes: ambient creatures who’ll ignore you unless attacked, then prey who flee and predators who will indeed try to eat you! And there are flying and ground-based versions of each.

"It’s a deep game that respects your time and can be finished. 8-10 hours for a main run, then a few more hours if you want to scour it for secrets!"

How long will an average playthrough of Journey to the Savage Planet be?

It’s a deep game that respects your time and can be finished. 8-10 hours for a main run, then a few more hours if you want to scour it for secrets!

Will the game feature Xbox One X and PS4 Pro-specific enhancements? Is 4K/60 FPS on the cards?

Both are in 4K and running a stable 30 frames.

How is the game running on the original Xbox One and PS4, in terms of frame rate and resolution?

Both run great and target 30fps.

Do you have any plans to launch on the Switch?

We have nothing to announce yet, but we are looking into it indeed! It would be a perfect fit in our view.

There’s been a lot of talk of SSDs, which the PS5 and the Xbox Series X are both confirmed to feature. What’s the biggest impact it’s going to have on development, according to you?

Almost nothing!

Speaking of next-gen hardware, something else that the PS5 has is a Zen 2 CPU- how big of a leap is it over current-gen hardware in your view, and how is it going to help development?

It’s more power, but I think the cloud and being able to large scale simulations and persistence will be the big new things this generation, so not so much the boxes themselves but what they connect to when you’re not looking!

The Xbox Series X also features GDDR6 memory – what’s the impact it will have on games in conjunction with the other advancements we’re going to see in next-gen consoles?

Not much from a design perspective!

Are you looking into next-gen versions of the game as well, especially as you get closer to next-gen console releases?

We would love to see the game remain playable on next-gen, but we’ll assess as we move forward.

"We would love to see the game remain playable on next-gen, but we’ll assess as we move forward."

Backward compatibility is something else both new consoles are banking on quite heavily. How much of an impact do you think it will have from the perspective of both, developers and consumers?

Sony and Microsoft seem to be thinking about releasing more updated hardware more often, like phones, and so they need to make sure software can stick around or they’ll do terrible things to devs… but really it just means we need to do more work supporting more platforms, which removes one of the best things about consoles: a reliable box with a long shelf life.

What’s your take on the PS5’s haptic-enabled controller? Do you think it’s something that can significantly add to an experience, or is it just going to be a novelty?

Just a novelty to me, like the analog buttons of the past or a racing wheel.

The Nintendo Switch has become a haven for all indie developers in the industry in the (almost) three years that it’s been out, with many smaller productions enjoying massive success on Nintendo’s hybrid platform. However, there do come along a few major indie titles every now and then that remain conspicuous in their lack of support for the system- one such game is the recently first person action-adventure title Journey to the Savage Planet.

Seeing as it’s been receiving quite a bit of praise since it launched a couple weeks back, there are some who’re wondering whether the game will eventually be making its way to the Switch as well. It’s a question we asked when we recently interviewed industry vet Alex Hutchinson – co-creator of Typhoon Studios and creative director of the game.

Hutchinson told us that though the developers had nothing to announce when it came to a Switch port just yet, it is something that they are “looking into”, before commenting that the platform would be “a perfect fit” for the game. Here’s hoping that turns into something more concrete sooner rather than later, because Journey to the Savage Planet really is one of those (many) games that would be perfect for the Switch.

Our full interview with Hutchinson will be live soon, so stay tuned to read the entire thing. In the same interview, he also spoke to us about next-gen hardware, and why he feels cloud streaming will be much more exciting in terms of how it impacts development. Read more on that through here.

Journey to the Savage Planet is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The PS5 and the Xbox Series X still have a lot left to reveal as far as their specs are concerned, but already, there’s quite a bit that has been revealed, plenty of which has got many in the industry quite excited. Both are confirmed to feature SSDs and different custom variants of AMD’s Zen 2 processor, while the Xbox Series X also boasts GDDR6 memory.

But according to industry vet Alex Hutchinson – co-creator of Typhoon Studios and creative director of the recently released Journey to the Savage Planet – those things won’t have as much of an impact on game design as some might think. According to Hutchinson, the real potential lies in cloud computing, and what that will allow developers to accomplish.

Speaking in an interview with GamingBolt, Hutchinson said that the impact of SSD’s on development heading into next-gen will be “almost nothing”, and that the Xbox Series X’s GDDR6 memory, too, won’t have much of an impact “from a design perspective.” What Hutchinson feels will be much more important is “not the boxes”, but “what they connect to when you’re not looking.”

When asked specifically about both consoles’ Zen 2 processors and how they will help development, Hutchinson said, “It’s more power, but I think the cloud and being able to have large scale simulations and persistence will be the big new things this generation, so not so much the boxes themselves but what they connect to when you’re not looking!”

There’s no question that cloud streaming does, in theory, have a lot of potential to truly have an impact on game design, which is why the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are investing in it so heavily. The question that’s always persisted so far is how soon cloud technology will become viable on a massive scale- whether or not it can happen quick enough to have a proper impact on game design in the near future, and whether it will dwarf what next-gen hardware will enable, remains to be seen. The future is exciting either way though.

Our full interview with Hutchinson will be live soon, so stay tuned to read the entire thing. Journey to the Savage Planet is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Typhoon Studios’ Journey to the Savage Planet is now available for Xbox One, PS4 and PC (via the Epic Games Store). As a first person title with heavy exploration, players land on a strange new planet AR-Y 26 and catalogue their findings. Said findings range from bizarre to life-threatening wildlife. Check out the launch trailer below.

As part of Kindred Aerospace, players will have limited resources. So you’ll need to scavenge different materials, feed it into their 3D printer and craft new items. Scanning different wildlife and plants can have benefits to one’s overall survival. For instance, you might be able to communicate with the creatures (even if it’s not a surefire thing).

With a healthy amount of platforming and shooting to go with the exploration, Journey to the Savage Planet offers quite happy-go-lucky adventure for players. Along with solo play, it’s possible to join up with a friend and explore together. Check out our review here for more information.

Journey to the Savage Planet wastes no time in setting its tone. You begin having just landed on yet-unexplored planet AR-Y26 and are greeted by the CEO of your interstellar exploration company, who proudly boasts of being the “fourth best” company in the industry. He assigns you the task of simply exploring the planet and determining whether it is habitable for humans by documenting its flora and fauna, though he does it in a humorously self-aware video message. As you set out to traverse the planet, it becomes clear that this humor and self-awareness is at the core of Journey to the Savage Planet. Your EKO, which becomes the voice that guides you and quips about every mission you complete, every enemy you kill, or every object you discover, carries this humor throughout the game, making for an experience that, from the very beginning, does not take itself seriously, and instead encourages you to simply have fun in its luscious world.

"Journey to the Savage Planet is an experience that, from the very beginning, does not take itself seriously, and instead encourages you to simply have fun in its luscious world."

Your overarching objective of exploring and documenting the planet transforms into your primary objectives to reaching the top of a mysterious tower that hovers over the rest of the planet. As your company left you with no gear due to “budget constraints,” part of the exploration of the world comes in collecting samples and materials to upgrade your suit, allowing you to gain new abilities that allow you to access new areas and reach previously unreachable secrets. Ultimately, you progress by finding particular alien objects of interest that allow you to untangle the mystery of the planet and show you the way forward, or, more commonly, the way up.

While the story never really got off the ground in terms of keeping me interested in the lore of the planet itself, the humor that runs throughout made it nevertheless enjoyable to play through. The writing is dynamic and consistently made me laugh, and it succeeds at doing what it’s intending to do with the story. In the vein of the initial mission video, there are also videos and text messages you can read on your ship that add a lot more personality to the world, and work for a quick chuckle in a lot of cases. Even in death, the game makes jokes, as you are explained to having been cloned every time you respawn, which allows you to find your previous corpse and dramatically bury it.

The game’s visual style furthers this lightheartedness as well, with its bright and cheerful color palette and incredibly memorable design that had very little in the way of technical problems throughout my time with it. There’s very little throughout the world that isn’t filled with personality, whether it’s the scanner that cracks jokes on the details for every individual thing you scan, or the huge eyes of the pufferbird that are as adorable as anything I’ve seen in a video game. Even the hostile creatures attack you in fun and interesting ways that keep you on your toes.

"The game’s visual style furthers this lightheartedness as well, with its bright and cheerful color palette and incredibly memorable design that had very little in the way of technical problems throughout my time with it. There’s very little throughout the world that isn’t filled with personality."

The world itself is also generally beautiful, and the environments are diverse and run the gamut from bright fields to dark, lava-filled caves without losing any of their charm. The constant sense of discovery from scanning every last item in the world makes it feel as though you’re progressing with every moment of the gameplay. That said, the game does sort of encourage you to leave scanning mode on as you run around, because it is the only way to document new items. This mode turns the colors around the world into an ugly green and yellow mesh, and it gets somewhat annoying to have to trigger scanning mode for every new object you encounter if you want to experience the real beauty of the world.

Each of the four major biomes carries the same tenets of the core exploration and combat throughout, but are diverse enough to feel like you’re traveling through unique areas, which is an important aspect, because you’ll become acutely familiar with the majority of the biomes throughout your time on AR-Y26. Each biome is filled with different scannable objects and secret areas that reward your exploration, and it strikes a strong pacing balance between giving you a guide for where to find certain hidden items and forcing you to search on your own. This sense of discovery is the game’s best feature, especially when you’re allowed to go at your own pace and search for hidden items, some of which even unlock a final ending after the credits roll. It was encouraging that after completing the critical path, I had only completed about 60% of the overall exploration around the world and had much more to uncover at my own pace. Even if the main story can be completed in just about 12 hours, there’s a lot more to the whole package that makes it worth your while to mess about in the open world.

The primary missions, on the other hand, are a bit more straightforward in their structure. They start in an open-ended sense, but by story’s end disappointingly become an exercise in following a waypoint marker. The late game missions really fall off a cliff in this sense, as they stray from the game’s best features in favor of a traditional raising of the stakes that falls flat. Many of these missions in the late game lean more toward focusing specifically on combat, which is ultimately the game’s worst feature. You play through the entirety of the game with the pistol you start with, upgrading your combat abilities along the way, but it’s too floaty for how precise some of the enemies require you to be, especially higher-level enemies and bosses. Much of the difficulty increases that occur throughout are manifested in higher numbers of enemies, but the combat is not tight enough to support these larger battles. These saw me taking more and more deaths, while I constantly wished for a way to return to the simple fun of being able to discover new areas and secrets hidden around the world.

"Much of the difficulty increases that occur throughout are manifested in higher numbers of enemies, but the combat is not tight enough to support these larger battles. These saw me taking more and more deaths, while I constantly wished for a way to return to the simple fun of being able to discover new areas and secrets hidden around the world."

Even in its worst moments though, Journey to the Savage Planet, never breaks from its lighthearted attitude, self-aware humor, and cheerful visual style, which makes it a constantly enjoyable experience. As I learned more about the world and gained more abilities to help me reach new areas, I couldn’t help but want to go back and find every last nook and cranny that I had missed or hadn’t been able to reach, which is a testament to how well the game pulls off its atmosphere and sense of discovery in every moment. Its core exploration-centric gameplay is incredible and had its hooks in me the whole way through. Though the planet may have been savage, the experience of documenting it was oh-so sweet.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

505 Games had a rather interesting project to showcase at The Game Awards 2018. Coming from a relatively new developer, Typhoon Studios, we got our first look at Journey to the Savage Planet. More of a cinematic trailer, this world premiere served to showcase the premise of journeying to a savage planet and fighting for survival. And failing, judging by the status of the astronauts in the trailer.

Journey to the Savage Planet is an adventure game and sees players dropped off on a strange alien world by an interstellar space corporation. They want you to solve the mystery of this world, or die trying. No gameplay was showcased during the world premiere – it seems we’ll have to wait till next year to see it.

The game’s due out on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. More bits and pieces of information will also be revealed next year, so take this world premiere as a teaser for now. The Game Awards 2018 continues to roll on with anticipated announcements for Death Stranding, Devil May Cry 5, Anthem, and much more. Stay tuned as the show rolls on.