Boneloaf – the developer behind multiplayer brawler Gang Beasts – is looking to move onto its next game in the near future. According to marketing and communications manager Connor Clarke at Develop 2023, the studio is considering a return to its original project: Grim Beasts.
“Funnily enough, Gang Beasts was always the second game in a trilogy,” states Clarke, sitting by the beach last week. “If you search back to the initial post on the Gang Beasts website back in 2013, you’ll see we were working on a game first – I won’t point it out, I’ll let you try and find out what it is – that will be basically the next thing we want to work on.”
Doing exactly that won’t provide blog posts on the official website, which appear to be missing as of writing. However, if you do dive into the past you will uncover results for Grim Beasts. Several gameplay demos exist – many of which will seem very familiar to Gang Beasts players. There’s even an old Twitter account, long abandoned since 2015.
However, a website called IndieDB comes to the rescue here, as it has preserved development details of this early project, including a text post from the developers. Said text post includes a list of reasons why Gang Beasts was developed first:
According to Clarke, the original vision for Boneloaf’s initial project was set aside following the popularity of the multiplayer mode when showed at conventions and physical meet ups, resulting in Gang Beast’s conception. However, with Gang Beasts nearly nine years old and still going strong, the team apparently wants to wrap up development with a bang, before moving on.
Clarke states: “We have kind of a vision for what Gang Beasts is, and it’s us basically making the thing that we wanted to make when we first released it. It includes all the content that we wanted to make, with the stages, but all the different modes as well.”
“There are things that we wanted to put in, like some sort of story mode, but we’re still playing around with ideas about how that might look. There’s stuff there that’s not just the bare bones kind of melee and gang modes that we really want to kind of have and hone. We’re in a very fortunate position in that we’re allowed the time to do that as well! The game has been out for nine years now and it has been successful, we’re pretty happy and set for them for the next few years really. We can now just concentrate on going back to the fans that basically gave us the opportunity to do it.”
What are you thoughts on Boneloaf making its destined return to Grim Beasts (and maybe even Star Beasts one day, the planned final game in the trilogy). Let us know below! If you’re looking for more work from Develop 2023, we’ve got a feature here: “It’s become pointless” – Video game devs speak up about the slow death of Twitter, and what comes next
