As explained by Raccoon Logic's Alex Hutchinson.
Aussie dev Alex Hutchinson sat down with Stevivor to explain some of the biggest changes between Typhoon Studio’s Journey to the Savage Planet and Raccoon Logic’s upcoming Revenge of the Savage Planet.
The sequel sees your explorer made redundant, abandoned on an alien planet without much of the gear they’ve been accustomed to. As Hutchinson explained, it’s giving some context to a classic Metroidvania: you had gadgets, and now you don’t.
“Your awful employer has treated you so carelessly that they’ve just thrown your stuff amongst the stars,” Hutchinson said. “So you have to venture forth.”
Savage Planet will actually see you heading to savage planets, plural.
“We wanted more variety and to have it feel a little more epic to bounce around different planets,” Hutchinson said. “But if you think about the some of the triple-A games we’ve worked on, there’s a lot of dead air. To get from point A to point B, you end up spending all this money on art that is just essentially to be there while you walk to the next place.
“We can’t afford to do that; [instead] we could delete a bunch of useless window dressing and just fire you to the next start point on another other planet, with a radical shift in art style.”
This change in approach means Savage Planet has “more density,” according to Hutchinson.
“I think there were, like, 27 creatures in the first game; there’s, like, 65 in this one,” he said. “There’s a lot of content, a lot of scanning to do.
“My pet theory on game direction is there’s two reasons to put a feature in a game,” Hutchinson continued. “One is to service the gameplay, as a challenge or something we need you to do. The other one is thematically appropriate — I’ll use a Batman example. Him using weird scanning goggles, even though it’s kind of sh*tty gameplay, is perfect because it’s exactly what you want to do to feel like you’re Batman.”
“[With scanning], we want you to feel like Star Trek, not Star Wars, or worse yet like Starship Troopers. We didn’t want you just killing things,” he said.
Players will be scanning wildlife in third-person, rather than the first-person presentation of Journey. I asked why the change, and if players could ever have the chance to swap between views.
“I wish,” Hutchinson said with a launch. “If we were [a triple-A budget studio] and we did this, it would have been ideal to have a toggle [between views].
“Our art team, our animation team — we wanted to have more humour and they needed to see the character to do that,” he continued. “We have all these states being applied to the player — being electrocuted, or stuck, or gooey, or on fire — and it’s hard to do just with hands [on your screen].
In addition to making things easier when it comes to traversal, Hutchinson added that, “it’s generally more mass market to be third-person than first-person, so it feels like you reach a bit of a wider audience.”
“I like the intimacy of the first-person as well,” Hutchinson admitted. “So, we might — and don’t hold me to this — try with post-release support to see if we can hack it in in some dirty way.”
We’ll have more with Hutchinson in the days to come.
Revenge of the Savage Planet heads to Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4, and PS5 on 8 May 2025, also available on Xbox Game Pass. Its Cosmic Hoarder Edition provides early access gameplay from 5 May.
This article may contain affiliate links, meaning we could earn a small commission if you click-through and make a purchase. Stevivor is an independent outlet and our journalism is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.
