Creators Discuss Upcoming Sequel to ‘Journey to the Savage Planet’

Repeating great success is not easy.

The creators behind Revenge of the Savage Planetsequel to the 2020 hit Journey to the Savage Planethave a lot on their minds. After Typhoon Studios closed as part of the Google Stadia shutdown, some dedicated members of the original game’s team joined forces to form Raccoon Logic, with the intention of making a sequel.

In a new interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Reid Schneider, the studio’s co-founder and current head, explained that he didn’t want to make a game that everyone expected.

“With the first one, when you’re creating a new IP, it’s kind of like catching lightning in a bottle,” he explained. “The whole time we were making the first game, we were thinking, ‘Will anyone care about a space game with fart jokes?’ It turns out that people actually care about a space game with fart jokes, so we said, ‘Okay, how can we go much further and broader?’”

The upcoming sequel will retain the original’s sense of humor and colorful world, but the game also tries to change things up in a number of ways, including switching to a third-person perspective.

“We felt like there were a lot of opportunities that we could explore, especially with comedy, moving it into third person,” Schneider explains. “There’s more physical comedy now—slapstick is a big touchpoint for us—and we just felt like we wanted to do something that was a lot bigger, better, unexpected, surprising.”

The Raccoon Logic team is comprised of many former AAA game developers, including Creative Director and Co-Founder Alex Hutchinson, known for his work on Ubisoft games Assassin’s Creed 3 AND Far Cry 4. This further raised the expectations of the community for the original game.

“In today’s market, every game has to be a standalone,” Hutchinson said. “This is a standalone game. If you played the first game, you’ll hear a lot of the jokes and get the extra content, but you don’t need any of the information from the first game.”

Journey to the Savage Planet was released in 2020 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch. Despite its small budget, it received positive reviews and met all of Typhoon Studios’ sales expectations.