Saros and Returnal studio Housemarque is currently celebrating its 30th anniversary, having been established in 1995 when two separate studios – Bloodhouse and Terramarque – joined forces (and names). During its first years, Housemarque released games such as the LucasArts-inspired Alien Incident, as well as TransWorld Snowboarding. In the early 2000s, it then gave us multidirectional shooter Super Stardust HD and zombie shoot ’em up Dead Nation, to name just two.
In the subsequent years, Housemarque kept on evolving its craft, making a name for itself as a studio with a penchant for arcade-style gameplay. The 2010s saw the release of Resogun, Nex Machina, Matterfall and more. All Housemarque games, and all with that famous arcade flavour. They were skill-based, and full of a heady fast paced action-focus.
In 2021, the studio then released its biggest game to date – the BAFTA winning Returnal, a third-person shooter with relentless roguelike gameplay. And while this title was grander in scale and ambition than anything that had come before, there was no doubting it was still a Housemarque game.
The studio is currently working on another AAA release in the form of Saros, which is set for PlayStation 5 next year. Details on Saros remain slim for now, but it will be a single-player game set on a hostile, shape-shifting planet, which is haunted by an ominous eclipse.
So now, with Housemarque’s games growing in scope and direction, and despite once saying it would no longer make arcade games, how does the studio still manage to keep that arcade spirit it is known for alive?
“It comes down to the studio’s DNA, and being respectful of our history and understanding what makes us special,” creative director Gregory Louden tells me during the studio’s 30th anniversary celebrations in Helsinki. “It is the fact we play like an arcade game, and we don’t compromise on that.”