In an interview with PlayStation Access, Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning reveals his studio Just Add Water are still in the planning stages for the announced remake of 1998’s Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus.
The team are trying to think what ‘special stuff’ they can add to improve it, much like Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty! which infused the original Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee with features from Exoddus.
The studio isn’t ”fully in the trench yet” with the new remake as it’s still on the drawing board. Lanning hopes all these remakes, aside from enticing new fans to the Oddworld franchise, will earn them enough to start pursuing fresh IP. New Oddworld adventures are also on-the-line.
What about crowd-funding platforms like Kickstarter? Lanning ‘doesn’t want to go out there cheap and hope they win big’ with pledges. He wants to be honest in what they want to do and how much it would realistically cost. Asking for $400k for example, but then getting $1.75 million still wouldn’t be enough since it would cost over $2 million or so to make.
It remains ”one of the most attractive options available today” and if you do it well then it can set a developer free, at which points he refers to Star Citizen and Chris Roberts - ”exceptionally well” as he put it, acknowledging it has tens of millions. It stands at almost $85 million today.
Lanning also touched on virtual reality and remarked it would be foolish to ignore but he accepts it’s difficult because VR is something you have to experience yourself to understand what it brings to a game. You also have to build a game for VR and not the other way around he said.
Independent studios like JAW have to wait for the install-base to be there because ”our pockets are just not that deep” exposing them to serious risk if they misstep.
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