One year after a successful Kickstarter, Takedown: Red Sabre finds a publisher in 505 Games.
Back in April 2012, a group of veteren developers, under the banner of Serellan and championed by Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfare lead designer Christian Allen, proposed an idea: make a tactical shooter in the vein of classics like Swat 4 and Rainbow 6. The plan was to use Kickstarter to raise the funds (back when that was a novel idea) for a prototype to shop around to publishers. Now, almost a year later, Takedown has found a home at 505 Games, the publishers behind such diverse titles as Sniper: V2 and Cooking Mama.
Newly christened with a colon, Takedown: Red Sabre will focus exclusively on tactical close quarters combat. The single player/coop campaign will feature small squads in non-linear environments with lots of replayability. Meanwhile the multiplayer side will feature squad-on-squad action between 12-16 players, most of which will be better than you’ll ever hope to be. Ever since the original Kickstarter, Serellan’s worked closely with its community to fill that hardcore, tactical niche that more recent titles have abandoned in favor of a wider audience.
505 Games seems to acknowledge that coming from a Kickstarter changes the developer/publisher relationship a bit. Tim Woodley, 505’s Head of Global Brand announced “Takedown: Red Sabre is a community project, one of the latest to be born out of Kickstarter, and the team at Serellan have already garnered a significant following. Our role in this partnership is to preserve and encourage the team’s direct dialogue with the community while ensuring we leverage our global presence to grow the audience, amplify the buzz and maximize the potential we and the community of early evangelists believe that Takedown: Red Sabre has.”
While Serellan’s original plan was to develop for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC, 505 seems to be playing things a bit more conservatively, with the announcement only mentioning “multiple platforms”. There is no word yet on a final release date.
Source: Serellan Blog
