While developer Haenir Studio and publisher Behaviour Interactive have been relatively quiet about upcoming co-op action horror game Blight: Survival, more details have finally been revealed with a brand new trailer, as well as through an interview with IGN by senior creative director Ashley Pannell, who discussed the studio’s silence and the immense excitement that the studio has seen thanks to a massive number of wishlists on Steam.
“We understand the heightened expectations of what we are being asked to deliver upon here,” said Pannell. “What I personally really love about this is somehow the zombie trope is so powerful that it’s such an all- encompassing thing that we just have to deliver on those expectations to the best of our ability. And that’s really our goal every day, is to try and reach that benchmark to work towards those goals. And yeah, it absolutely is a big responsibility for us to do that. But one of the things that we have as a result of this, is that we have a community with us, and we have a group of people who are on this journey with us. We’re not alone here. It wasn’t just comments from three years ago. And even now, we are doing small scale play tests with members of the community, with the team, to really try and fulfill those expectations and make sure that we deliver on the game that A, they thought it was going to be, and B, that we believe that it can be at the same time.”
“So we’re on a journey together. We may have not been loud to the world, but we’ve been very active with our community, talking to our community, making sure that we get their feedback whenever we can. And like I said, even through actual small scale playtesting already, which we’re doing regularly.”
As for how development has been going in light of the project having gotten wishlisted by more than 1.5 million Steam users, Pannell spoke about how there has also been a fair bit of scepticism surrounding the title, with some calling it “too good to be true”. He acknowledged that “people have been burned by things that have been released.” However, the studio’s ultimate goal is to “prove that we are making a real game, that it is awesome. We’re focusing on the fun, we’re focusing on the things that really matter to making a good quality, fun game that fulfills these expectations.”
Pannell then went on to speak about what sets Blight: Survival apart from other co-op games. While he doesn’t directly bring up “any obvious genres”, he noted that the title thrives on offering players risks and rewards for every combat encounter. This aspect of risk-and-reward, he noted, is a “key element of the overall driving part of many features in the game.” Generally speaking, Blight: Survival takes ideas from a variety of different genres, but action horror is where Pannell believes it lands closest.
“It is a combat driven game with elements of exploration, with extraction light elements that are in there, and other elements also from games of that genre that help us drive the internal tension and the risk the players take whenever they’re in a given space,” he explained.
While Blight: Survival will also feature extraction game elements, Pannell noted that the studio isn’t simply working on a clone of what we’ve seen in ARC Raiders, for example. “We have extraction elements,” he explained, “but it’s not driven exclusively as the extraction genre. And we’re also taking extraction influence from other types of games, like for example, Helldivers or Deep Rock Galactic, that have extraction components as a core part of the phase of the game.”
“Again, not a direct analog, but we have both elements of what we normally consider a round-based game with extraction, plus a pure extraction game too. We have both those elements in our game, and they work in harmony with each other over the course of your playtime.”
“The core game loop is you go in, you try and amass what you can, and you can always push for more, but you could always back out when you feel like you’ve got something that is meaningful.”
Blight: Survival is being developed for PC. However, there is still no release date, at least for now.
