Early in 2023, British studio Antimatter Games closed its doors following a costs-reduction program by its parent company. AMG had made a name for itself in theaccessible realismniche offirst-person shooters, as one of the key developers ofRising StormandRising Storm 2: Vietnam.
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At the time of its cancellation, the Truro-based studio was working on two major titles: a reboot of theI.G.I.espionage franchise, andCold Wartactical shooter'83.
WhileI.G.I.remains lost to the sands of time,‘83has found a new home that is more familiar than it seems initially.
The core of the Antimatter Games team merged with a group of veterans from Tripwire Interactive to continue work on'83as Blue Dot Games. The reborn studio reached an agreement with Enad Global 7 to take ownership of the project.
The'83team has announced the reborn project should come out in 2026.This is a major jump from early 2024 when the very existence of'83was up for questioning.
What’s Next For ‘83?
In a developer diary shared earlier this month, Blue Dot Games mentionedthe game has gone through 8 rounds of community playtests, and though they encountered server performance issues, these have been fixed.
The studio has reiterated the goal of having stable75-player matches, though a previous post mentioned wanting to push this to 100.
Blue Dot Games has spent most of January implementing a new animation framework andrefining the weaponswhile adapting animations to the new model.
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Next month,the developers hope to finish implementing Nanite and Virtual Shadow Maps, available through the Unreal 5 toolkit.‘83will also use the IRIS networking architecture provided by the game engine, which the developers hope will result in smooth performance at the player levels expected.
The hope is that by the end of February, the team can put out a comprehensive showcase of the'83gameplay loop.Considering its presence in the trailer, this will likely play out in the Duga map. Quite the treat forSTALKER 2fans.
Parallel to that, there is still work to be done in optimization, and analyzing the prospective user hardware profile to set the minimum specs accordingly.
A great start of the year for a game that was on the brink of extinction for so long. Here’s hoping'83comes out nice and polished so thatARMA Reforgerhas some competition in theCold War tactical shooterfield.
