Sherlock Holmes Chapter One developer, Frogwares has announced that its next game is in development and its working title is Project Palianytsia. The studio released a couple of early concept photos and says a full reveal of the title is slated for this summer.
Frogwares who is known for working on multiple Sherlock Holmes titles describes Project Palianytsia as “a mix of eldritch horror coupled with Victorian-era mystery” that’s more of a smaller scaled game that’s aimed at fans of the studios’ past games, The Sinking City and Sherlock Holmes series. The Ukraine War forced the Sherlock Holmes developer to suspend their efforts on their next open-world game and to pivot the team onto a project that’s something different and more streamlined.
“While still challenging, prior to this, everything we released during the war was existing projects that needed to be finalized. We are now making something almost entirely from scratch which is a lot harder under these circumstances so we needed to think smart about what is realistic for us. The idea was greenlit for this very reason as it is something our current team and setup can deliver compared to doing pre-production on another open-world title, which is what we were doing prior to the war,” Frogwares communications manager, Sergey Oganesyan explained in a press release.
“The name Palianytsia is symbolic to Ukraine as it’s considered part of our national cuisine. But it’s also the equivalent of phonetical Dark Souls for Russians who often can’t pronounce it correctly when trying to pass it off as Ukrainian. And so now it’s often used in the field as a test to quickly identify possible affiliation of unknown individuals.”
The news follows Frogwares receiving a MegaGrant from Epic Games this past Monday. The undisclosed amount will go toward employees and will contribute to relocation efforts to safer locations in Europe or in the developer’s home country, Ukraine which was unprovoked in an attack from Russia earlier this year. Developers developing a game in Unreal Engine can apply for Epic’s MegaGrant and receive up to $500,000 USD.
