Rafael Colantonio, co-founder of Arkane, who left the studio in 2017 and launched indie developer WolfEye Studios a few years later, teases his next game. [It started with an image of Colantonio and his longtime associate and WolfEye CEO Julian Roby "pitching a new game at GDC."

Not much to see there: some sort of building or refinery in a desert-like setting, or maybe a power plant. There is also the words "retro sci-fi RPG" in the lower left corner of the screen.

I'm intrigued.

The next day, we "sneak peeked" at what was cooking in Wolf Eye's Austin office, including that whiteboard:

Again, the words "retro sci-fi RPG" accompanied two more, this time: "first-person perspective."

More intriguing. intriguing.

And (yes, because there's more) one follower laid out a sort of wish list of features for the new game: first-person perspective, atmospheric retro sci-fi setting, RPG mechanics, branching story, immersive sims, and aliens.

Oh my.

This is actually not the first time Wolf Eye's new project has been talked about; in May 2023, Colantonio said the studio intends to "get more ambitious" with its next project, and also promised to free itself from, as one Twitter poet put it, "the NFT bullshit."

Colantonio has had a remarkable run over the past two decades, from Arx Fatalis in 2002 to Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, the Dishonored series, Prey, and WolfEye's debut Weird West and Roby has played a central role in all but Prey. (He left Arkane in 2013 after the release of the first Dishonored.)

I admit there is some bias there: I like fairly immersive sim games, and it never bothered me that Prey was not worthy of a sequel I guess.

So here's one last interesting story from Colantonio that actually happened earlier this month: in response to a Twitter user's request for more "Prey," he said, "I'll try to get more out."

[26] First-person retro sci-fi immersive sims sound a lot like "games in that vein," don't they? If I don't get "Prey 2," I'm definitely going to get something inspired by "Prey," and it's going to be a long time before WolfEye's next game is properly revealed, but for now, as the saying goes, just knowing it's coming to fruition is enough to satisfy me I'm happy enough to know that, as the saying goes, it's coming to fruition.

Speaking of Prey, if you haven't played it yet, it's now $6 on GOG and $10 on Weird West.