It’s getting to where different studios or indie devs taking on classic franchises isn’t all that surprising anymore. The latest such case is related to the Turok franchise, which is getting an indie reboot called Turok: Escape from Lost Valley in a style that’s very different indeed.
Pillow Pig is the brain behind Turok‘s rebirth, and it’ll be published by Universal Studios. The initiative was actually part of a contest Unity and Universal hosted, challenging developers to create a new entry in a classic Universal franchise, like Back to the Future and, of course, Turok. While the grand prize winner was Gbanga’s Voltron: Cubes of Olkarion, other dev teams continued with development and Universal backing.
As the trailer thumbnail shows, this isn’t your granny’s Turok. It’s a bloodless, adorable, chibi-styled re-imagining that tasks Turok with… well, with escaping from Lost Valley.
Despite the obvious visual changes, the rest of the series’ mechanics are largely intact. Players are challenged with choosing the best weapon for a given situation as they face off against massive foes drawn from Turok’s history of deadly, murderous beasts — though they look awfully cuddly. It’s worth noting that the game is inspired by the Turok comic series, not just the games.
The Turok: Escape from the Lost Valley Steam description gives an overview of what to expect:
Encounter iconic creatures from the Turok comic series with a cute but dangerous twist…Confront your foes, assist primordial natives, and keep Andar and yourself alive as you Escape from Lost Valley!
That last part about assisting natives is particularly important, since it means Escape from Lost Valley shakes up the Turok gameplay style of kill everything in sight before moving on and killing everything else.
Turok games in the PS2 era couldn’t keep up with modern FPS titles like Halo and failed to distinguish themselves, partly due to presentation issues, but also because they just didn’t offer anything new.
Escape from Lost Valley follows in the trend of Cadence of Hyrule by daring to do something different from its source material and, as a result, brings a breath of fresh air to a tried and sometimes tired formula.
Turok: Escape from Lost Valley is set for a July 25 release date on Steam.
