Housemarque looks back on Returnal’s success

venturebeat.com:

GamesBeat Summit 2022 returns with its largest event for leaders in gaming on April 26-28th. Reserve your spot here!

Last week I joined a group of journalists in the offstage winners’ room for the DICE Awards celebrating the best of video games in 2021 at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas. Each group of winners filed through our room and we collectively tossed a bunch of questions at the winners.

Housemarque’s Returnal won for outstanding achievements in original music composition and audio design. We met with Gregory Louden, narrative director for Returnal; Harry Krueger, game director of Returnal; and Ilari Kuittinen, managing director at Housemarque.

I asked one of the questions about difficulty, while other journalists asked the rest. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

Question: Congratulations on the win. How does an award differentiate itself when it’s determined by your peers, as opposed to the media or fan voting?

GamesBeat Summit 2022

Gregory Louden: It’s huge. I’m sure the team is going to be so proud to win best music and best audio design. It’s triumphant. We’re so proud of Returnal. We wanted to push the boundaries of what you can do with PlayStation 5, with the Dual Sense and with 3D audio. I’m sure our audio team are dancing in London and Helsinki. It’s very exciting.

Question: Housemarque made a big jump in terms of the scale of the games you’re making. At this point, looking back, how do you feel about making that leap from small bullet hell shooters to a roguelike with a plot bullet hell shooter?

Harry Krueger: We have maybe built a name for ourselves over the last 12-13 years for making these arcade-inspired games – Resogun, Nex Machina, Super Stardust HD and so on. Each of those had an incremental