Xaviant Games, the development team behind The Culling, suddenly released a trailer announcing a sequel to said game a mere nine months after its release. The catch? It also reveals its release date, and it's today: July 10th. In what can be look at as an uncommon move, at least in the gaming industry, this dev team looks to right their wrongs of the past; from what started out as a promising Early Access in March 2016, with a peak playerbase of 12,622, to an ultimately disappointing release date on October 5th, 2017, with a peak playerbase of 61.
"On the PC, the vast bulk of our audience really only played during the first few months after we launched in Early Access in March of 2016. We did dozens of patches and content updates after that, but we never saw our sales or player numbers return after the initial boom died down. To be honest, apart from a passionate core audience, the majority of PC players haven’t seen or thought about The Culling in two years," Director of Operations, Josh Van Veld, told Andy Chalk of PCGamer. "It’s a big responsibility and in retrospect I think we initially failed to appreciate how big changes could be disruptive for a live game, Early Access or not."
Van Veld goes on to talk about changes and improvements based on feedback from the community that have been taken to heart and thus hopes to bring back the playerbase that saw the games' potential back in 2016. The only differences he would speak on are the match size increase, from 16 to up to 50, and a larger emphasis on firearms and gun fights.
Here's the announcement trailer for The Culling 2:
The Culling was a battle royale game that pit 16 players (or 8 pairs) against each other on a small island. Different from other well-known games of the same genre,
Fortnite and
Playeruknown's BattleGrounds being two of the most popular, players could finish various tasks such as traveling a certain distance, surviving long enough, and doing so gave the players a special currency that allowed for crafting or buying of equipment to help them win. Not much is known about how much of the gameplay will be carried over to the sequel, more info to come after its release.
The Culling 2 will be released later today for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC, retailing for $19.99 USD.