In a live Q&A that followed the release of Paradox’s Q3 interim report (as spotted by PC Gamer), CFO Alexander Bricca explained, “We prefer to give the studio a situation where they can focus fully on the game development and not having to address fans reaching out to them. So therefore we have so far not disclosed the name of the studio and we are very happy to keep it that way for still some time.”
Despite the secrecy, Paradox says the new developer is “doing quite well and we are happy with the progress of the project now”. Unsurprisingly, however, the turmoil surrounding the development of Bloodlines 2 has had a dramatic impact on its launch timeline. Whereas Paradox was initially aiming to ship the game this year before booting Hardsuit off the project, it now says there is “still quite some time before we can start to talk about release dates.”
After a seeing a few rumors on the net, I followed-up with a dev friend based in Brighton who said The Chinese Room, the walking-sim studio that all but shut down back in 2017 before being bought by Sumo Digital, is the unannounced team working on Bloodlines 2. It sounds like a shocking fit but maybe, given they’re essentially a new team, we shouldn’t expect any of their future games to resemble their previous work.