Today, Atari has unveiled a brand new puzzle-platformer game called Kombinera, which is coming to pretty much any platform you can think of this April.
Kombinera is a new Atari IP where players take control of differently colored balls and use them and their unique abilities to work their way through over 300 environments and puzzles. The balls all move in unison, but different colors will interact with puzzles in different ways, requiring concentration and puzzle-solving to move forward.
The game is developed by St. Louis-based Graphite Lab, with Atari publishing. Atari's role is, per CEO Wade Rosen, a recommitment to publish more games going forward after a significant loss of momentum in the last decade. Since September, Atari has published a number of "Recharged" versions of older arcade games such as Brick Breaker, Asteroids, and others. But Kombinera is the first new IP to come out of this initiative, and according to Rosen, the first of many to come.
Rosen tells IGN that Atari's upcoming release calendar has the publisher releasing, on average, a new game every month for the next 13 months. That includes a mixture of classic IP (like the Recharged games), brand new IP, and new games from existing franchises. For now, Atari is working entirely with external studios, though Rosen suggests they may one day bring development in-house. He says that in the coming months and years, we can expect to "see Atari collaborate with a variety of studios, from small independents to larger studios with well-established reputations."
One key component of all of Atari's plans, including the brightly-colored Kombinera, is to reinvigorate the arcade-y feel that was synonymous with Atari games back in the day.
"Kombinera is a puzzle-platformer that has some of the personality traits of an Atari arcade game," Rosen says. "What made those arcade experiences memorable, and something you wanted to return to, was that they were immediately accessible and yet layered with depth and surprises that you discovered as you mastered the game."
What Rosen is surprisingly candid about is Atari's place in the wider gaming consciousness in 2022. He recognizes that it isn't the same well-known company it once was with the disappearance of arcades and its move into a quieter publishing role. But he wants to change that, beginning with Kombinera:
"We are in an interesting moment in the lifespan of Atari," he says. "It is an iconic brand that has a natural place in pop culture as much as it does games. Atari appears in film, television, art, music and fashion — and it feels natural. It belongs. Yet, despite the brand's roots in video games, today’s Atari has less presence and less relevancy in gaming culture. You might say the brand is out of balance. A modern Atari will find that balance, where its role in gaming culture is in parity with its role in pop culture."
Kombinera is planned for launch on PC via Steam and Epic, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, Atari VCS, iOS, and Android in April 2022.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
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