Oddworld developer licenses engine for Abe's Oddysee HD - NA

Oddworld Abe’s Exodus and the related Oddworld games were great for many of us. If you haven’t played them you should. What you may not know as well is that the developers (Just Add Water) are gearing up. And it stands to reason it’s for Abe’s Oddysee HD.

Just Add Water and some possible new Oddworld games

We know that Abe’s Oddysee HD is going to be their new game. But let us talk about what led up to this. First, they started hiring new staff in a big way. Developers usually like to do this before a particularly ambitious title.

The next big point was even more telling. They licensed a new engine. The Bitsquid engine, in fact. It is the same engine that has previously been licensed by Paradox Interactive for some of their games.

We hope that they won’t be stopping with just their previous games though. With a new engine and extra staff we could see a continuation. And we personally would love to see some more Oddworld titles coming out.

What the heck is the Bitsquid engine?

The bitsquid engine focuses around delivering a product on multiple platforms at once. Basically, this will allow them to update their games and deploy them to multiple platforms at once. Other benefits include:

• Very fast and easy creation with especially fast delivery to game consoles.
• In-depth rendering tools giving them everything from tessellation to 3D vision.
• Coding optimized for multiple cores.
• Multiple ways to script including Lua and others.

What we hope this doesn’t mean

This engine is basically able to carry a game to every possible platform. We are hoping that the developers don’t just coast along on their past success. They could fall into the same rut THQ did of milking one series. As we all know, the success dries up eventually. We will keep you posted on future developments here.