Housemarque may still have a few more surprises in store for this year’s ruthless roguelike, Returnal. Via their official Twitter, the developer teased a single line, “Atropos..?” accompanied by a picture of a strange rock formation—I reckon it’s probably something related to DLC.

April 2021 seems like decades ago at this point, so it took me a moment to remember Atropos is actually the planet where Returnal takes place. That stoney structure in Housemarque’s image doesn’t appear to be anything familiar lurking in one of the roguelike’s biomes, but the background is all blurred out, and it’s a picture of a screen. Your guess on what this actually could be is just as good as mine, but maybe it’s something we’ll learn in new DLC.

Atropos..?#Returnal ????‍???? pic.twitter.com/oZdDUHoXYR

— Housemarque (@Housemarque) November 26, 2021

Returnal’s senior narrative designer Eevi Korhonen retweeted the image and added, “We filmed something really amazing today. Hope we get to share more soon!” Connecting the dots here, it’s worth pointing out The Game Awards are less than two weeks away on December 9, so that “something really amazing” Housemarque filmed may be in preparation for the annual celebration. Returnal has made reveals at the ceremony before with gameplay trailers, and it is up for a couple of nominations this year.

I bounced off of Returnal pretty hard after a few tries early on, succumbing to one of its early biomes one-too-many times for my liking. While I did mostly like how it felt and absolutely dug its creepy space world, I settled for watching a friend beat it a couple of times. I can appreciate Housemarque’s work on it since then, though; they’ve added a Suspend Cycle option with 2.0 that’s at least got me interested enough in giving it another shot. I’ll be just as bad as ever, but at least I can feel a little less intimidated about trying again when I know I can walk away more. Perhaps a DLC reveal is what’ll get me back in.

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The Game Awards are ten days away, btw.

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