Game developer Housemarque has teamed up with Eugene Jarvis to develop the studio’s next game, Nex Machina.
Eugene Jarvis is known as the man behind the classic arcade games Defender and Robotron. Defender was the inspiration for Housemarque‘s shoot-em up Resogun. In turn, according to a post on the PlayStation Blog from Housemarque Head of Publishing Mikael Haveri, Resogun inspired Jarvis to work with Housemarque on Nex Machina.
Nex Machina is a twin-stick arcade shooter with voxel destruction mechanics. The backstory should be familiar to many players, but it has its own twists on the classic robot revolution narrative. In Nex Machina, humans created robots as helpers for mundane tasks. The robots eventually developed sentience and surpassed mankind. However, nobody realized that robots had taken over, as even the “best and brightest” were too preoccupied with updating their facebook and twitter accounts to notice. The player takes the role of a lone warrior who will defeat the robots and save mankind.
The trailer consists of a stylish cinematic and informative gameplay. The cinematic is reminiscent of Ubisoft’s Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and introduces the audience to the game’s backstory. The gameplay, however, is the highlight of the trailer. The environments are bright and colorful, the enemies are accented with 80’s-styled neon lights, and the action is fast-paced and frantic enough to reach bullet-hell levels of chaos.
Nex Machina does not have a set release date, but we can expect much more from Housemarque’s latest in the months to come.