Cyanide's Road Map
French developer talks about its future.
Date: Friday, November 16, 2007
Author: James 'Prophet' Fudge

In an explosion of activity, 2007 sees the seasoned French studio Cyanide develop into a full-fledged player on the world game scene. The studio took on an international dimension with the opening of a facility in Montreal, Canada and it cast aside its "PC/sport" mantle to release games for both the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS platforms as well as making an incursion into the hack 'n' slash genre with Loki.

Cyanide's Canadian studio (Amusement Cyanide Inc.) is currently working on several new projects. The most complex is the development of a dynamic 3D animation engine which integrates physical and biomechanical laws under the control of a powerful artificial intelligence system. The engine will generate real-life, real-time character behaviour for collisions, falls, tackles, kicks, punches, etc which take into account all the forces governing the game environment. The resulting engine will be used in future Cyanide games like Blood Bowl, which is to be published by Focus Home Interactive, as well as being licensed to other small and medium-sized game studios, worldwide. In addition to the animation engine, the Canadian studio is working on two of Cyanide's current games: an add-on to the recently released hack 'n slash RPG - Loki - as well as a version of Blood Bowl (see below) for the Nintendo DS.

Game development is continuing apace inside Cyanide's French HQ. Based in Nanterre, in the west of Paris, the various teams are working on a wide variety of projects. The 2008 edition of the perennial favorite Pro Cycling Manager is well underway and it will be released, as usual, just before the start of the Tour de France (June 2008). Other teams are busy with the adaptation of Blood Bowl to the PC and console platforms (Xbox 360, Sony PSP and Nintendo DS). This will be a faithful representation of Games Workshop's board game in which insane warriors of the Warhammer fantasy universe compete in a "blood sport" that vaguely resembles American football. Release is scheduled for late 2008. At the same time a multiplayer action/RTS game will be brought to market. Set in a dungeon environment where players embody greedy adventurers looking for gold and glory, it is by far the most comical universe ever created by Cyanide,

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