Surprise video game releases are becoming more and more common in the industry, especially for independent developers who don’t have to run things through a million different checks before they put something on a storefront. Well No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games is the latest to jump on this, and is releasing its next game, The Last Campfire on PC, PlayStation 4, Switch, and Xbox One tomorrow, August 27.
If the extent of your Hello Games knowledge is from No Man’s Sky, this is going to be a fairly big leap from open-universe space exploration, as The Last Campfire is an exploration-driven puzzle game starring a cute little dude named Ember, who is described as a lost soul who is wandering through a world of other lost souls. Throughout, you’ll meet these other people, some of whom have fallen into the pits of their own despair. As Ember, you’ll be given choices to help these people as they deal with whatever they’re going through, but you unfortunately won’t be able to help everyone. Since the game is exploration based, you’ll be learning new abilities as the game goes on that will allow you to access new areas and overcome previously insurmountable obstacles.
Alongside the announcement, Hello Games released a commentary video featuring founder Sean Murray as he walks you through the game’s story and development.
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A post on the PlayStation Blog explains that The Last Campfire has been a passion project for a fraction of the Hello Games team, which is already fairly small, at just 25 people as of last year.
Other members of the studio are still supporting No Man’s Sky in the years since its 2016 release, which was ported to Xbox One in 2018 after two years of PlayStation 4 and PC exclusivity, followed by the addition of cross-platform play earlier this year in June. Most recently, the open-universe game got an update that leaned into the horrific possibilities of outer space in the form of “Desolation,” which launched back in July. The new content included horror-driven areas and monsters to fight, all with new lore to give it a place in No Man’s Sky’s typically calm and serene universe.
Not every update has been in the form of story content, however, as back in December a synthesizer was added in for players to create their own music. All in all, the No Man’s Sky community has really taken and ran with all the creative features to create its own communities and subcultures within the game’s space, even roleplaying organizations like an in-universe spy agency or building “events” like car shows for players to show off their decked out ships and rovers.
For more on Hello Games and No Man’s Sky, be sure to check out all the guides we have here at Fanbyte.
