Bloober confirms Silent Hill 1 remake in production, and won't rule out a Cronos sequel just yet
Mason noise.
Polish horror specialist Bloober Team has revealed that the Silent Hill 1 Remake, which was briefly teased by Konami in the summer, is now in production.
In an investor call yesterday, Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno and Vice President Karolina Nowak commented (the answers in the transcript are attributed to Bloober Management): "We have two first-party production teams, one of which is working on Silent Hill 1, and the other has begun work on a second project." Bloober currently employs approximately 250 people.
No further details were shared, but presumably it's the Silent Hill 2 Remake team that's working on it, and I expect work began relatively soon after that game was released, in October last year. The Silent Hill 2 remake was a turning point for Bloober Team's reputation, which flagged in the years since Layers of Fear and Observer positioned it as a horror studio of note. People had been worried about how the Silent Hill 2 Remake would turn out, but it turned out marvellously.
"Against the odds, Bloober Team has delivered a remake that both expands Silent Hill 2 in just the right places, and gives careful attention to what it preserves," wrote Vikki in our five-star Silent Hill 2 Remake review. The game has also sold well, passing the 2m sales mark at the beginning of the year.
Bloober Team has been busy since then making an original IP horror game of its own called Cronos: The New Dawn, a sort of retro-futuristic psychological horror inspired by, and rooted in, 80s Poland. The game came out only a month ago and, once more, did well for Bloober.
"Cronos: The New Dawn is Bloober Team's best original game yet. An immersive romp through a suffocating portrayal of 80s Poland, where your journey is far from what it first seems," wrote Kelsey in our four-star Cornos: The New Dawn review.
Cronos sales seem to be encouraging as well. "After the launch weekend, we reported sales of the game at 200,000 units," said Bloober's Babieno and Nowak during the investor call. But the company is not currently committing to a sequel or post-release content. "At the moment, apart from marketing updates, the company is not actively working on development (neither a sequel nor DLC), but we do not rule it out in the future and we are definitely thinking about developing this IP."
The second-party team Bloober mentioned - the team that isn't remaking Silent Hill 1 - is apparently working on smaller projects. Five of them, in fact, which sounds like a lot but they could be ports of existing games, or games that are smaller in scope. Indeed, Babieno talked excitedly recently about making horror games for Nintendo consoles, which led to suspicions that the Silent Hill 2 Remake will make its way to Switch 2.
Bloober is also making a game for Netflix, codenamed Project N, which Babieno and Nowak said was "a relatively short project". I expect it's one of those five games the second team is working on.
"Our goal is to become a leader in the horror genre," the pair said in the call, "which translates into a strategy of releasing games in increasingly shorter periods between releases. This is supported, among other things, by our second-party department. We also work on major titles within this department, so don't expect a long wait between major releases."
The investor call being yesterday meant it collided with the industry-shaking news that Electronic Arts, long one of the world's largest game-makers, will be acquired and made private by a consortium of investors, including Donald Trump's son in law, and the Saudi Arabian state. Bloober's Babieno and Nowak were asked for their thoughts on it.
"I've been predicting the trend of privatisation of publicly traded companies and consolidation of the gaming market for several years," Babieno, presumably, said in the investor call. "This is a good sign. However, I don't know the exact plans of Saudi investors regarding pressure on results (which could pose a risk of, for example, significant layoffs). I hope that this information, along with the upcoming release of the new GTA installment, will lead to very positive changes in the industry itself and in the financial markets."