Following the flop of the fantasy FPS Immortals of Aveum, a "core team" from developer Ascendant Studios has found a new home at Absurd Ventures, the studio launched in 2021 by Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser.
The former Ascendant team will form a new studio called Absurd Marin, headed up by Ascendant Studios founder and director Bret Robbins. An Absurd Ventures rep said the studio is currently made up of "about 20 developers from the core team behind Immortals of Aveum," and will continue to expand as development on its new game progresses.
"Bret has put together a highly talented, passionate team," Houser said. "We are very excited to have them join forces with us as we begin to work together on one of our original new titles."
Absurd Ventures revealed in November 2023 that it is working on "two universes," an "audio fiction series" called A Better Paradise, and American Caper, which is expected to debut its "first story" sometime in 2024. Absurd Marin will apparently be doing something new: The announcement says it's working on "a separate story-driven action-adventure title set in another, as-yet-unannounced Absurd universe."
It's not clear where this leaves Ascendant Studios. Less than a month after the release of Immortals of Aveum, Ascendant laid off nearly half its staff, and then earlier this year, just a week after saying it was "hard at work on our next project," most of the remainder were put on furlough. The Ascendant website is still up, but there's been no activity on the studio's Twitter feed since August 13—prior to which it was reasonably active, tweeting at least once a week or so. It seems likely that Ascendant is gone for good: I've reached out to the studio to confirm, but if that is in fact the case I reckon I'm not likely to get an answer.
