Former Runic and Gearbox Devs Form New Studio, Monster Squad

It was with a heavy heart I reported last year that Torchlight and Hob developer Runic Games was being shut down by their publisher, Perfect World. And while their closure didn’t have quite the same splash as, say, Visceral, it still meant a lot to me, one of their long-time fans. So it’s with a much lighter heart that I announce (or, rather, repeat PC Gamers announcement) that the core of the Runic Game team has risen from the ashes with a brand-new studio and a brand-new game.

The studio, called Monster Squad, is comprised of eight people, including four senior members at Runic games (including former head Marsh Lefler), as well as former members of the Borderlands team from Gearbox, such as art director Wes Parker.

So that’s a superstar team right there. As for what game they actually plan to make together, well, we have not been blessed with as many details as I’d like. When PC Gamer asked, they hinted it would be a game that focused largely on co-op play, with shooting and melee combat against AI enemies. PvP wasn’t dismissed outright, but they made it clear they wouldn’t work on anything “competitive”, given their shared history making cooperative titles.

They also shared that the game would have lots and lots of loot (what else would you expect), and while it would have a story, it wouldn’t play heavily into things: they don’t want to do what Torchlight 2 did and go heavy with plot, and instead focus on making gameplay fun and responsive and make it feel good to hit monsters.

They also said that there will be an early access period when it eventually goes live.

It’ll probably be a very long time before we get to play this game ourselves, or even see how it plays. You can get the rest of the details at PC gamer.