Back in 1999, gaming was great. الألعاب released late in the original PlayStation generation squeezed every last bit of performance out of the hardware, delivering impressive graphics and all-time classics whose sequels we still play to this day. 26 years later, we’re excited to announce that our sci-fi horror game Derelikt will feel like your console has gone five generations when it launches on PlayStation 5 on November 13th.
Derelikt is set at Von Neumann Station, which is attached to an anomalous asteroid in Saturn’s orbit. The circumstances are harsh. The work is hard, home is a million miles away, and people are stressed. In addition, a mysterious drone is pushing everyone further and further to their limits…
As an external contractor, you are tasked with uncovering the fate of the missing excavation team Delta, which has disappeared without a trace on the dilapidated surface. What you discover turns things from bad to worse in a flash! The corridors are dark, the systems are failing, and the survivors you meet don’t tell the same story. It was of the utmost importance to us to convey exactly this feeling of not being able to trust the people around you, and at the same time being confronted with true, otherworldly horror.
The Von Neumann outposts are well-equipped with an arsenal of traditional weapons, and as you progress you may even have some more bizarre weapon prototypes and even alien weapons at your disposal. In Derelikt there are also over a dozen characters you can interact with, each with their own secrets and agendas. Some are useful, some are dangerous, some are corrupt, and some (let’s be honest, most) are all three!
Not only did we want to create this frighteningly tense world full of scary moments and fast-paced gunfights, but we also wanted to ensure that resource management, exploration, dialogue and classic-style puzzle solving were a central part of the suspenseful experience.
Derelikt borrows heavily from the PSOne’s sci-fi horror era, making it a well-rounded moment to write this today. The aim was to give the impression that Derelikt was found on a CD-R in the dusty, long-forgotten storage room of a now-defunct development studio that was active in the late 90s and was simply ported to modern platforms. The developer firmly believes that retro does not necessarily have to be crude or primitive, and aims to create the most faithful homage to fifth-generation graphics available on the market.
The game features 100% lovingly hand-painted textures and vertex color lighting. Affine texture warping was deliberately implemented and then mitigated by dynamic geometry subdivision – just like the highest quality games of the time did – and the game also features retro-style CGI cutscenes. This approach achieved a fine balance, with Derelikt appearing aesthetically pleasing while still seeming plausible on the hardware of the time. The team made a conscious effort to implement modern game design while retaining the core feel and charm of this era of sci-fi horror, including an option for players to turn the effects on or off depending on personal taste.
Derelikt has been in development in some form since late 2021 and has gone through a turbulent and exciting development phase. The team hopes the game is as wild a ride for players as the development is.
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