The highly anticipated Biomutant finally received an official release date recently, but fans have been waiting for any news from the developer for quite a while. The team working on the upcoming game remained silent for what felt like forever that fans even thought that the game was canceled.
However, developer Experiment 101 has recently given an explanation regarding the game and why it took so long to finish developing. Experiment 101 was established back in 2015 by former Just Cause developers. The team then revealed Biomutant back in 2017 during the Gamescom event of that year.
During that time, publisher THQ Nordic expected the game to be released some time in 2018, but this wasn’t made possible. So many gamers looked forward to the game’s release, especially since Experiment 101 kept on impressing with every Biomutant gameplay footage that got released.
It touted innovative combat mechanics, an incredible open-world, as well as interesting anthropomorphic characters. As many gamers may know, especially those who kept following the game’s progress during that time, Biomutant was included in most-wanted games lists for several years.
Finally, after so long, Experiment 101 and THQ Nordic finally broke their silence and revealed that the highly awaited game will finally be released in May 2021.
That said, many wondered what took the developer so long. To answer that question, studio head Stefan Ljungqvist recently spoke with IGN, where he explained that Biomutant increased in scope as the years went by. For instance, the game’s script back in late 2019 had over 80,000 words—since then, though, it drastically rose to almost 250,000 words.
Not only that, developing a game with a scale as large as Biomutant is no small feat, especially since Experiment 101 is only composed of 20 developers. Ljungqvist explained that the team didn’t want to launch a glitch-filled game that wasn’t ready for release. As we all know by now, releasing a game such as that won’t end well. As such, the developer decided to take its time working on Biomutant, ensuring that it’s as polished as possible.
According to the IGN report, Experiment 101 wants to remain small in size. However, it can’t be denied that this decision will impose limitations and restrictions in terms of game development.
Ljungqvist states that QA proved especially difficult, especially since Biomutant has an open-world gameplay. Every time a bug gets discovered, the 20 developers have to be the ones to fix the issue.
Of course, it’s expected of an open-world game to have a few bugs and glitches here and there upon release, but developer Experiment 101 doesn’t want any game-breaking ones included during launch.
Even though Experiment 101 took such a long time developing Biomutant, Ljungqvist states that publisher THQ Nordic remained patient with their team. It’s great that the publisher didn’t pressure them into releasing the game as fast as possible, as this made Experiment 101 avoid mandatory crunch times—an unhealthy industry practice.
From what we can see so far, it’s hard to believe that only 20 developers worked on a large-scale game like Biomutant, and we’re certainly impressed. With Biomutant and countless other upcoming games getting released this year, 2021 will definitely be an exciting year for gamers worldwide.
