After the nightmare of developing games for Google, Revenge of the Savage Planet rises from the ashes

It took longer to buy back the Journey to the Savage Planet IP and source code from Google than it did to sell Typhoon Studios to it. “Because Google’s used to buying stuff, but they are used to giving it back,” Reid Schneider, co-founder and studio head of Racoon Logic, tells me on a visit to their Montréal office for a hands-off preview of Revenge of the Savage Planet, a sort-of sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet.

Revenge of the Savage Planet

Publisher: Racoon LogicDeveloper: Racoon LogicAvailability: Out 2025.Platforms: Steam, Epic Games Store, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5

I’m anecdotally told by Schneider and other Racoon Logic employees that Google wasn’t used to a lot of how game development worked. “The core of it is: don’t work with companies whose primary business is not making games, if you would like to make games,” Alex Hutchinson, Racoon Logic co-founder and creative director, summarises. “[Google] didn’t like how game development tasted,” Schneider later adds.

The reason why new studio Racoon Logic knows so much about working with Google is that it was co-founded by, and hired, many employees who worked at Typhoon Studios, the developers of Journey to the Savage Planet. “The first, last, and only game Google ever paid for internally,” Hutchinson laughs, as he and Schneider explain Typhoon’s troubled history with Google.

The short of it is, Typhoon Studios was founded in 2017 by a small team of former triple-A developers who had many years worth of experience working on mega franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Watch Dogs, The Sims, and Batman: Arkham. Google acquired Typhoon in 2019 and placed it under their Stadia Games and Entertainment division. You can guess how that turned out, as Stadia announced its closure on 1st February 2021 – the day Journey to the Savage Planet released on Stadia. When the team should have been celebrating their new release, they were instead drinking together over Zoom.

“If you get made redundant the best thing you can have is support from co-workers,” Schneider says, “but in a pandemic, everyone’s stuck in their basement.”

“It was pretty dark,” Hutchinson says. “The most callous redundancies in games are the day you ship, you know… but that happening in a pandemic really was not fun.” The situation did act as a sort of rallying cry, however, as Hutchinson explains that most people wanted to “go around again”.