Earlier this week Boss Key Productions, the developer behind the first-person shooter LawBreakers and the recent battle royale title Radical Heights closed its door. The announcement came from the studio head Cliff Bleszinski who was the former leader designer on the Gears of War series. In the aftermath of the studios closure Bleszinski took to Twitter to reveal a number of projects which were in the concept stage at the studio, including two virtual reality (VR) titles, that the designer wanted to make.
The first of these was codenamed ‘Rover’ but later changed to ‘DogWalkers‘ with the dog part standing for Destructive Ordnance (on the) ground, Bleszinski explained. The title was to be a mech-style tank videogame inspired by World War 2 tank crews and would see five teams of five battling it out in multiplayer within these huge, walking battle walkers.
Bleszinski continues to explain the title by adding that each player would be carrying out a different role, be it a gunner, pilot, reporting the walker and so on. He later added that the air in the world’s fiction was toxic and so any leaks to the walker would need to be repaired quickly or gas masks would need to be put on. Players would also have the option to rappel outside and weld the legs to make repairs, toss wrenches to each other to speed up the process also.
The second title that Bleszinski mentioned on his Twitter feed was said to be a VR spiritual sequel to Toobin’ (1988), a river racing title created by Atari for the late 80’s and early 90’s era consoles and arcade cabinets. The title was dubbed ‘Donuts’ and was, as Bleszinski puts it, meant to be “a way to fight Seasonal Affection Disorder. (Mario Kart on water with animals in VR.)”
“You could drink (ginger) beer for health, crush cans on your head, or shake up full ones for AOE attacks. Slam both hands to jump logs. Roman candles to pop tubes etc” Bleszinski explains further.
Though Boss Key Productions is no longer active, it seems as though the studio had a number of interesting ideas for titles in the works. Though there is always a chance these titles could be brought to life by another developer working with Bleszinski on them in the future, it is unlikely to happen.
You can see a number of concept pieces from the two titles above and below and for more stories like this in the future, keep reading VRFocus.
