You'll find over 30 new releases coming to Xbox next week (we'll have the full roundup for you this Saturday), and one of them is bound to go under the radar — but it's from the creators of the GoldenEye 007 and TimeSplitters games!
The reason it might not get attention is because it's nothing like either of those two titles, taking the form of a roguelike strategy and word-crafting game called Beyond Words. The idea is to "journey through a living puzzle shaped by your decisions" where you'll "build powerful combos, unlock upgrades, and master a challenge where victory is spelled one letter at a time".
Specifically, Beyond Words is coming to us from Free Radical Design co-founders Steve Ellis and David Doak, who are now at a new studio called MindFuel Games. They were previously working on the TimeSplitters project that got shut down a few years ago, and decided they didn't want to jump back into another huge team environment.
Here's what they had to say to our sister site, Time Extension, a couple of months ago:
Steve Ellis: David and I have worked together on and off since the mid-1990s, most recently on a new TimeSplitters project at the reformed Free Radical Design. Unfortunately, the decision was made to shut down the studio after its parent company got itself into financial difficulty, so I had to lay off the entire staff.
It's soul-crushing to build a team and then have to close it down. Having been through this twice, I was keen not to jump right into another big team environment. I was also keen to get more hands-on than it was possible to be while running a larger studio, so doing something smaller sounded like fun.
David Doak: My best experiences of making games have been working in (relatively) small teams. So that's what we decided to do. I'm too old for all the other s**t now.
And so, here we are with Beyond Words! The game officially releases for Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S on March 5th according to Xbox Wire, although the developer doesn't seem to have announced this date just yet.
There is actually a Steam Next Fest demo if you have a PC (including the ROG Xbox Ally) you can play it on, and a new preview from the folks at PC Gamer mentions how they're "having a blast" with it so far.
We'll leave you with more details for Beyond Words below, along with some screenshots.
From the creators of GoldenEye & TimeSplitters comes Beyond Words the genre-defining fusion of roguelike strategy and word-crafting. Build powerful combos, unlock upgrades, and master a challenge where victory is spelled one letter at a time. Build powerful word combos, unlock game-changing upgrades and journey through a living puzzle shaped by your decisions. Every choice, every letter, every placement matters.