Well, who saw that coming? The Order: 1886 developer Ready at Dawn has been teasing an announcement of their next game all week, but nobody could have foreseen it as being a cutesy multiplayer title all about controlling a rotund animal around an arena in an effort to knock other players out of bounds.
De-Formers is certainly a far cry from the lavish visuals and production values of the studio’s Victorian-themed third-person shooter, but the developer’s chief creative officer and president Ru Weerasuriya has told GamesBeat (via VideoGamer) that the studio always likes to try new things and take “a different path from what people expect.”
We’ve always taken a different path from what people expect. We’ve done platformers (Daxter), action games (God of War: Chains of Olympus), and third-person shooters (The Order: 1886). Now we’ve got an arena melee combat game.
Weerasuriya continues to explain that Ready at Dawn’s ultimate goal with De-Formers is to capture the same kind of couch co-op magic that gamers so fondly remember with the likes of the Mario Kart series. Online and split-screen multiplayer will be available from launch.
That feeling of playing couch games like Mario Kart is something we have held very close in our hearts. This is a game that allows for that. We are trying to recapture that, with up to four people on a couch.
No release date has been given for De-Formers just yet, but it will launch on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC as a digital-only title in the near future.
