Solar Ash and Hyper Light Drifter devs are on board
Annapurna is well-known for publishing some of the most imaginative, polished, and moving indie games out there, so we’re pretty excited for them to venture into developing their own stuff — they announced their own internal studio back in 2020. Of course, a publisher with that much prestige is pulling some pretty impressive talent, including some names you might recognize if you keep up with the indie crowd.
Chelsea Hash (who was the technical art lead of What Remains of Edith Finch) will be heading up the studio’s project as game director, along with technical director Brett Lajzer (Solar Ash), senior producer Evan Hembacher (Solar Ash), art director Cosimo Galluzzi (Solar Ash, Hyper Light Drifter), and environment artist Nate Grove (Solar Ash).
Hash expressed her excitement for the new project in a press release: “We’ve worked closely with the people at Annapurna Interactive for years and this was an exciting next step for us to be able to integrate with the team. We are working toward a special new experience and look forward to revealing more details.”
Annapurna’s name has been synonymous with quality for years, so hearing that they’re starting their own dev team, especially with such seasoned industry veterans, is some pretty exciting stuff. Apparently the teams will be pulling inspirations from previous games they’ve worked on, although we don’t know quite yet exactly what kind of game they’re planning on making. The studio’s website currently has job postings up for 3D artists, a technical designer, and a VFX artist, so it seems like they’re growing the team at a pretty healthy pace.
As something of an Annapurna fangirl, I’m interested to check out what the team has in store for us down the road. We’ve definitely got a bit of a wait ahead of us, but hopefully Stray‘s upcoming release can keep me satiated for now (and I have the feeling it will).
