During The Game Awards on December 10, 2020, Sony and Housemarque released a new Returnal trailer and the release date: March 19, 2021, exclusively on PlayStation 5. A day earlier, the date had already appeared on a Best Buy Canada page, which was taken down shortly after.
On the PlayStation Blog, Housemarque recalled that it was celebrating 25 years in 2020 and that, over the previous 14 years, it had left its mark on PlayStation’s arcade-style games, with titles such as Stardust, Dead Nation, Alienation and Resogun, the latter a PS4 launch game. The Finnish studio called Returnal its most ambitious project yet: a third-person action game with a stronger narrative.
The story follows Selene, a space explorer trapped in a cycle of resurrection on a hostile planet. The roguelike formula, combined with exploration and platforming, changes the path with every attempt, and the studio’s signature bullet hell remains present.
The game was designed around the PS5’s features. The DualSense reproduces environmental effects through haptic feedback, and the adaptive triggers separate two actions: press halfway to aim, press all the way to fire the weapon’s alternate fire mode. 3D audio, with compatible headphones, helps you feel the planet’s loneliness. There is a strange calm in this kind of game: every death teaches something.
What came next
On January 28, 2021, the date was pushed back by a little over a month, and Returnal came out on April 30, 2021. In June 2021, Sony bought Housemarque, which became part of PlayStation Studios. The game was well received by critics and won Best Game at the BAFTA Games Awards. The free Ascension update, on March 22, 2022, brought co-op and the endless Tower of Sisyphus mode, and the PC version came out on February 15, 2023. Its spiritual successor, Saros, was released in 2026.
Where to buy
Source: PlayStation Blog.
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