Surgent Studios is the indie team founded by actor Abubakar Salim, and earlier this year it launched its debut title in Tales Of Kenzera: ZAU, a 2D action-platformer about grief and loss.
Though ZAU was a hit with many players and critics, it didn’t experience meteoric sales, and the studio has since had to put its team on notice for redundancy. The hope for the studio’s future now lies in its next project, and securing funding for it.
As a way of helping that along, Salim and Surgent Studios have announced their next project. Speaking to VGC, Salim revealed Tales Of Kenzera: Project Uso, which continues the ‘Tales of Kenzera’ titling, though ‘Project Uso’ appears to be a codename for now.
Instead of another 2D platformer, Project Uso is set to be an Afro-Gothic RPG. It’ll be an isometric game still set within the Kenzera universe, but according to Salim it’ll be a darker story than the one told in Zau.
“It’s still in the Tales of Kenzera universe, but it’s darker, it’s more visceral, it’s gritty. The best way I can describe it is a single-player, isometric, Afro-Gothic action RPG. The story (with Zau) is that as a shaman you’re challenging the God of Death as a way of looking at the idea of healthy handling grief, so I came up with the idea of what if one reader is inspired to defy death itself, so they create this android which is fashioned to cradle the spirits of the dead,” Salim told VGC.
He added, “and what if that spirit isn’t a human being, it’s a God, Eshu, the God of Chaos, so now you’ve got these two mentalities in one frame? That’s something I thought would be really cool to explore.”
“We want to really focus our time and attention on the mechanics, on the gameplay on the feel of it as a whole, because I think that’s what’s really key. That’s what is going to make it really sing. As passionate Dungeons & Dragons players, the Surgent team and I knew we wanted to try our hand at creating our own RPG system. As a way to give Project Uso a fast-paced, real-time feel, we created the Crucible system, which requires players to roll against themselves.”
Despite the troubles Surgent Studio faced in having to layoff developers shortly after its debut title, Tales Of Kenzera: ZAU cemented the studio and Salim as game creators to watch.
Project Uso already sounds like an incredibly enticing game. Hopefully Surgent Studios will be able to make it.
Source – [VGC]