Selene’s loop adventure evolved with new game modes when the Returnal Ascension DLC launched last week. The team at Housemarque are excited to create new ways for fans to play the challenging yet rewarding arcade shooter on PS5. In fact, satisfying gameplay repetition is ingrained in the studio’s culture, which dates back to 1994.
I’m sure not everyone reading this blog is aware of our long history as a studio, so keep learning more about our story and how we ended. The launch of Returnal and becoming part of the PlayStation Studios family.
Whether Returnal is your first introduction to Housemarque or you have played some of our previous games, you may not know that we are the oldest game studio in Finland, founded only a few months ago our friends at Remedy, creators of the Alan Wake series and control.
But how did Housemarque come into being, and how did we eventually become part of the PlayStation Studios family?
Demoscene Origins 90s
Before Housemarque, there were Bloodhouse and Terramarque, two gaming studios headed by Harri Tikkanen and I, both deeply rooted in 1990s game demos. In 1995, Harri and I decided to join forces and studios. ours, and that’s how Housemarque was born.
Housemarque Studio Head Ilari Kuittinen
Demoscene was founded around hobbyists called demo teams, creating tech demos with the best possible visuals and pushing the limits of the hardware available at the time, and Finland had a demo community. powerful, developed on systems like Amiga, Commodore, Atari, and more. Local game developers got into it, because it was just the most fun thing to do at the time; many of them are young and still learning. This is the pre-game industry in Finland and may have been one of its starting drivers. But even with such a thriving community, the game development industry is still quite small in Finland: it is very difficult to create games and actually complete them. Many games have ended up in game development limbo for a year or even more. That’s why Housemarque started out successfully.
In December 1994, myself – Ilari Kuittinen – and Harri Tikkanen sat down and had our first serious conversation about joining forces, as we got to know each other because of the small size of the game industry. , where everyone knows everyone else. We quickly reached an agreement, and in June 1995 we decided to start a new gaming studio. We chose to name it Housemarque, a combination of our companies: Bloodhouse and Terramarque.
Super Stardust (Amiga, Amiga CD32, 1994 | PC, 1996)
Enter Housemarque
The first games we released as Housemarque – a year after it was created – were Alien Incident (1996), a point-and-click adventure game, and Super Stardust on PC (1996), a game Space shooter is the beginning of our console origins. , and a game we’re still proud of to this day. Super Stardust was originally developed by Bloodhouse and released on the Amiga and Amiga CD32 in 1994. These games are just the beginning of the Housemarque saga.
True to the local gaming culture at the time, we wanted to create an incredible experience with limited hardware, while pushing boundaries. Something we still do to this day! We want to create impressive games with great audio-visual to complement players’ gaming experience. It’s a less traditional approach to game making, but it worked for us.
Our first professional gig with the PlayStation business was in 2006 through Guerrilla, during the development of Killzone: Liberation, when we helped with various aspects of the game. It’s been an enjoyable experience helping Guerrilla: our programmers are primarily working on optimizing the game and its frame rate. We’ve had experience with this while working on some game demos on the PlayStation Portable, so we’ve got a solid understanding of the hardware. Following our partnership with Guerilla, the PlayStation business was looking for small game studios to produce games for their new initiative, then known as the Electronic Distribution Initiative (EDI). , which later became the PlayStation Network. Housemarque is one of the companies they contacted to discuss whether we would like to work with them. Looking back, the KillZone: Liberation work was the first work we did for the PlayStation business and many more after that.
Concept mood section for Super Stardust HD (PS3, 2007)
Before mid-summer 2006, Housemarque went to Liverpool to introduce some of their games to the platform, one of which was Super Stardust HD. The PlayStation team really liked the concept of the game, so we went back to Finland to perfect it. Super Stardust HD has a special place in Housemarque history. After a few challenging years, we have had the opportunity to return to our roots, but at the same time we can also do creative things in the survival shooter genre, because the power of PS3 allows We do things that were not possible before. A game changer is global game-level coverage, which to our knowledge has not been possible before. This allows us to create a unique game experience and freedom to maneuver across the surface of the globe. When combined with the now famous “Housemarque dash” and complex scoring system, Super Stardust HD is a game that begins a new chapter in the company’s history, allowing us to further explore the possibilities. functionality for arcade action games in the modern console era.
At the same time, publishers became interested in smaller digital games. This proved to be a great opportunity for us, as we were able to focus on making the games we wanted to make without having to chase trends, allowing us to stay original.
Game is King
Very early on, we decided to live by purpose rather than mission statement: we wanted to create unique gaming experiences. We want to create something that others don’t do the way we do.
This is also reflected in our company motto: Game is king. Great gameplay and fun is the thread that connects all of our games, along with the unique audiovisual experience and passion for everything that makes video games great.
Dead Nation (PS3, 2010)
Dead Nation monster concept art
Before the release of Super Stardust Delta for PlayStation Vita coming out in early 2012, we started thinking about what we wanted to do next. We ran two, or even three, developments concurrently, and we completed development on the Dead Nation: Road of Devastation DLC in the fall of 2011. One of the ideas was to revive the side scrolling screen. and Resogun was one of the three Reso game concepts we had at the time, the others were Resoman and ResoCastles. Dead Nation has been inspired by great dual stick shooting games like Smash TV, created by our hero Eugene Jarvis. He also created one of the most recognizable arcade games of all time: Defender. In 2013, we released Resogun, one of the PS4’s launch titles and one of the most recognizable of our games. It’s definitely a high point in our history as we’re named next to the other larger studios in the genre! As a result, we have become a more mature studio than before. We did something we’ve never seen anyone do before and wrapped a game level around a cylinder and used voxel based graphics. The rest is history as they say, and Resogun was the best-reviewed PS4 exclusive over 15 months after launch.
Replay (PS4, PS3, PS Vita, 2013)
Resogun signature art
Artistic Level Resogun
It’s a little known fact that we’ve completed the “Driving Trilogy for Great American Video Games” by adding the Commando mode to the Resogun: Defenders DLC. The game mode completes our tribute to three great arcade games – Asteroids, Defender and Missile Commando. It is more commonly known that we actually met Mr Jarvis, when Resogun was nominated for best action game and Eugene received his lifetime achievement award at the DICE Awards in 2014. We ended up working together on the Nex Machina, filming the entire process and making a documentary called “The Name of the Game”.
Nex Machina (PS4, 2017)
Alien Nation concept art (PS4, 2016)
The birth of profit
While before 2021 we’re primarily focused on making downloadable mini games on the PlayStation Network, our biggest comeback and success story is undoubtedly Returnal. And that’s a story!
Profit (PS5, 2021)
From the outside, Returnal must have seemed like a huge leap in scope compared to previous Housemarque titles, and that’s right. Can we do a Return if it started with the same range it ended? It’s hard to say, but the path we took in the end felt just right like it was organic. On the other hand, we had no plans to make the game end like that, and we had to adapt several times in the process. It may have been foolishness, but the stupidity paid off. But we didn’t do it alone: Returnal would never have happened the way it did, had it not been for an open publisher backing us.
Due to the pandemic, I was mostly able to play the alpha version of Returnal, but even then I could see the game’s potential and knew it was going to be something special. When PlayStation legend Shuhei Yoshida visits, he can’t stop playing: it shows us player reactions over the next few months.
Profit (PS5, 2021)
Join the PlayStation Studios Family
The choice for Housemarque to join the PlayStation Studios family after 26 years as an independent studio was discussed with several key staff members prior to the launch of Returnal, in March 2021. It was officially announced to everyone. people after the game came out, when everything was done. The rest of the company was announced at the end of June. The response was really positive – albeit in a very Finnish way, silent and reserved.
We felt very welcome and felt that we had now joined the right company. Our purpose as a company has not changed and remains to create unique game experiences. As part of this family of world-class game studios, we have the best opportunity possible to plan for the long term, develop further, and better prepare for the demands of making the next games. in the hope of meeting the extremely high standards set by others by members of the PlayStation Studios family.
When approaching Housemarque games, I can hope to offer some advice: come with an open mind and be ready for a different kind of experience. Get ready for challenges as well as bigger rewards and a sense of success after you conquer our games on your own. If you want to practice for Returnal (or any game in the future), our past catalog is the way to go! I personally recommend Resogun on PS4. Many players don’t know how many games we have released before the bigger ones: we have more than 15 games and we are planning to make many more!
