Hello from Housemarque!

It’s time to introduce our latest title that we’ve been secretly working on for 2 years.

As a part of our recent transition away from our core genres, we’ve had a hard look at what really makes up an arcade game and how can we bring those elements to whole new heights. Fortunately a few greats have been able to show the way and bring gameplay centric experiences to wider audiences. We hope to expand that progress as we bring our explosive effects and second-to-second gameplay to new genres.

Our newest title will still remain in a slight shroud of mystery, but we can say that it will be a high flying and heavy hitting, multiplayer centric experience. It will be the first title that we treat as an on-going service, this also means that there are ways to get to play it earlier and we’d love to develop it further with a feedback loop in mind.

This will also be our second game made with the Unreal Engine (Matterfall was the first), and now we are also officially branding our added layer of special effects candy as the “Housemarque VFX Engine”. Basically meaning that we put an extra effort into creating custom technology solutions that take our upcoming titles to whole new visually shattering ends.

That is it for now, as an extra we’d like to remind that a new trailer for the upcoming movie “Name of the Game” is now live. It’s a documentary that follows our team for three years as we got to work with our biggest idol, Eugene Jarvis, while making “Nex Machina”.

All the best!

Housemarque Team

Helsinki, Finland — December 5, 2017 — Finland’s longest standing game development studio, Housemarque, today announced that it is licensing Unreal Engine 4 and moving away from its own in-house technology for future projects, including a soon-to-be-announced title. For over 22 years, Housemarque has built and utilized its own engine technology, creating critically acclaimed arcade shooters including Super Stardust HD, Resogun and Nex Machina, but will now harness the power of the Unreal Engine 4 to focus on new genres and continue bringing great products to market.

“Throughout our 22 years, Housemarque has taken pride in building our own proprietary technology to build the games that we want to play. Our summer 2017 release – Matterfall bucked that trend and was the first Housemarque release to use Unreal 4”, said Ilari Kuittinen, CEO of from Housemarque. “We have made the decision to use Unreal Engine 4 exclusively going forwards. Unreal 4 enables fast prototyping, contains modern pipelines and editors for artists and designers and provides really valuable documentation and support forums. Plus, it’s still very customizable so we can still use our award-winning rendering and visual effects tech with the engine. We’ve got some exciting stuff in the works!”

“We are thrilled that Housemarque has chosen to adopt UE4 for their projects”, said Mike Gamble, European Territory Manager, Epic Games. “Having a studio with the reputation of Housemarque put their trust in UE4 is humbling and we are really looking forward to seeing what they can achieve with the engine.”

Housemarque’s decision to license Unreal 4 comes after the studio’s announcement that they are changing track after 10 years, from developing arcade coin-op inspired games to exploring new genres including multiplayer experiences with strong, robust communities.

Letter to the fans

For more than 20 years we’ve been carrying the torch for arcade, bringing arcade coin-op inspired games to the market with a Housemarque twist, and I think it’s fair to say we’ve gotten pretty good at it by now! Our games have received great critical reception over the years, perhaps the best example being Nex Machina, which we published in June to great critical acclaim, garnering a metacritic score of 88. Nex Machina was a dream project, as we got to work with our hero and arcade gaming legend Eugene Jarvis, who is responsible for some of the most revered arcade games of all time such as Defender, Robotron 2084 and Smash TV. He has had a tremendous impact on our games, including Resogun and Dead Nation.

However despite critical success and numerous awards, our games just haven’t sold in significant numbers. While some of them have reached a massive audience due to free game offerings across various digital sales channels, this unfortunately doesn’t help pay for development, which gets costly for high production quality. We are extremely grateful to our fans and partners, who have enabled us to work on awesome games like Super Stardust HD and Outland. For your unfailing love and support we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

But now it’s time to move on to new genres. Lackluster sales of Nex Machina have led us to the thinking that it is time to bring our longstanding commitment to the arcade genre to an end. While this genre will always hold a special place in our hearts, the industry is moving more toward multiplayer experiences with strong, robust communities, and it’s time for Housemarque to move forward with the industry. Hence Nex Machina and Matterfall will be the last of their kind coming out of our studio. Our purpose as a company remains the same, however – to create enjoyable and memorable gaming experiences for players while simultaneously creating a great workplace that allows people to flourish both professionally and personally.

Looking ahead to our next projects, we are exploring something totally different than what you might expect of us, but we believe this will lead to the creation of even more engaging gaming experiences. Our core values remain the same – gameplay first with first class execution. We are really excited about our new projects and look forward to unveiling our first game from the new era of Housemarque.

Whether you have been a fan of Housemarque for years or have just played a few of our first games, we invite you to join us in discovering new gaming frontiers! Stay tuned!

Ilari Kuittinen
CEO

Being stated as “the game of Housemarque’s career” (Eurogamer) and “a thrilling masterpiece” (Guardian), Nex Machina focuses on delivering pure arcade action gold. The game features an arcade campaign with 6 worlds full of secrets and alternative paths, local 2-player co-op mode and seasonal online challenges in Arena mode. Nex Machina is a definitive twin-stick shooter for any modern arcade action heroes out there.

Nex Machina was developed in collaboration with the arcade legend Eugene Jarvis (Robotron, Smash TV) and the Housemarque team that brought you the highly-acclaimed PS4 launch title RESOGUN. It is Housemarque’s first self-published game in its over 20 year-old history.

Photo credits: Orii Souan http://www.oriisouan.com/

ゲーマーからゲーマーに愛をこめて、

Housemarque より

• Nex Machina features a fully fledged arcade Campaign that can be played solo or in local co-op with a friend.
• Tons of secrets and alternate paths in each world. Upgradeable player character with access to six (6) different special weapons, that all can be lost as you perish in the torrent of endless robots.
• Deep layered gameplay that let’s you juggle with saving humans and trying to stay alive.
• Complex enemy design and pulsating bullet patterns that can get you in the zone.
• Three different main difficulty setting and more to unlock as you learn the ropes. Each difficulty offering new things to learn and conquer.
• A changing challenge mode called the Arena, where you can return to locations in the game that are now totaly different with faster speeds and other fresh modifications. Competing to beat your friends and the world with unique leaderboards for each challenge.

http://nex.housemarque.com/housemarque_blog_steam