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Creative director of Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit (and lover of long titles), Aurelien Regard, is now working on a solo project called The Next Penelope: Race To Odysseus. It’s futuristic action racer with loud colors and explosive action.
If you weren’t aware, Regard co-founded Arkedo, the studio behind Hell Yeah!, but due to lack of money (among other reasons), Arkedo currently doesn’t have any employees right now, nor are there any games being produced there. Yet, it hasn’t been closed down and could come back one day. It’s an odd situation.
Anyway, this has given Regard a chance to strike out on his own to make The Next Penelope, for which he’s doing the art, code, and music – everything, basically.
The Next Penelope has you searching for Ulysses across the galaxy, choosing which planets to visit yourself, and in any order. All of the worlds are unique in terms of the races, bosses, and permanent abilities for your spaceship they hold.
As mentioned, the game is an action racing game, and so you’ll be steering at high speeds from a top-down view against other opponents. You’ll also need to outpace huge robotic creatures that eat the track or rain missiles down on you – there’s some decent variation.
The central feature is the energy system. You see, all weapons cost energy to use, and this means that, according to Regard, you’ll be “very powerful and close to death at the same time.” That’s a highly strung risk-reward system if I’ve ever heard of one.
Regard hopes to bring The Next Penelope to Windows, Mac, and Linux in late 2014. A Wii U version, and possibly other console versions, will be arriving in 2015. There’s more information about the game on its website.
