Gang Beasts devs plan to resurrect the drunken putty-people brawler’s spiritual successor as their next game
Revealing original plans for a ‘Beasts’ trilogy
The devs behind flailing fisticuffs multiplayer game Gang Beasts have revealed their hopes to resurrect its predecessor as their next major project, a decade after Boneloaf’s second wobbly wrestling hit took off and derailed their initial plans.
The studio’s marketing and communications manager Connor Clarke told RPS pals VG247 that Gang Beasts was originally planned as the second game in a trilogy, starting with earlier project Grim Beasts.
Grim Beasts started life in 2013, a couple of years before the team reused its physics-based fighting model in Gang Beasts. As VG247 dug up in the absence of Grim Beasts’ website or Twitter account - both long since defunct - a development record preserved on IndieDB shows that the devs ultimately decided to release Gang Beasts as its debut due to the second game’s faster development and lower technical complexity, allowing the studio to more quickly become financially sustainable.
The text post outlines a plan to ‘cannibalise’ tech and assets from Gang Beasts to improve Grim Beasts. That never happened, after Gang Beasts exploded in popularity following its live showing at events.
Clarke said that Grim Beasts is now “basically the next thing we want to work on", as the devs reach their “vision” for what they wanted Gang Beasts to be after close to a decade working on the game. The team still hopes to add a story mode - when they work out what that might look like - but are satisfied for now with the modes and levels added so far.
“The game has been out for nine years now and it has been successful, we're pretty happy and set for them for the next few years really,” Clarke explained. “We can now just concentrate on going back to the fans that basically gave us the opportunity to do it."
As for the supposed third part of the ‘Beasts’ trilogy, there was no hint. Maybe check back in after another decade.