Revenge of the Savage Planet hopes to follow in the footsteps of Metroid Prime

You've been fired from your intergalactic exploration job and stranded on an alien planet – but wouldn't you know, you still need to complete all those pesky training modules.

Revenge of the Savage Planet is a massive sequel that carries on from Journey to the Savage Planet's unique take on the Metroidvania genre, as well as its biting satire on late-stage capitalism. It has the infectious fun that was felt in the original, just with everything blown up to an even bigger scale. It seems like developer Raccoon Logic has made some smart changes on the first game's formula – creating a dynamic take on the Metroidvania genre that revels in absurdity and exploration.

Wild ride

As a direct follow-up to the first game, in Revenge of the Savage Planet, you once again assume the role of a grunt working for Kindred Aerospace – the "fourth best interstellar exploration company." But Kindred has been bought out by an even bigger corporation, causing your position to become redundant. The first Savage Planet had no qualms about diving headfirst into commentary about capitalism, and Revenge's setup of another company swooping in feels particularly prescient in the face of Raccoon Logic forming out of the ashes of Google closing the developer behind the first game, Typhoon Studios. Revenge of the Savage Planet's sci-fi setting and story strikes a fascinating balance by making its world and technology feel both exotically advanced and surprisingly slapdash and put together with duct tape.

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Self-referential humor is often first and foremost in Revenge of the Savage Planet – from the PSA videos you see on a constant loop in your base, to the way your character respawning is framed as the company producing a new clone. Even the way your character runs is done in an extremely exaggerated Pixar-esque gait with arms and legs flailing, and you can break into a kind of rockstar slide at any moment. Humor seeps into everything in the game, and there's more deliberation behind that fact than you might expect.

"We always said the humor we wanted wasn't for belly laughs, but for you to snicker to yourself the whole time," says creative director Alex Hutchinson. "It's not a comedy show, but instead of horror or action ,everything is leaning comedic. If we layer it enough, even if people only see 60 percent of it, it'll be funny to them."

That approach to enriching the entire experience permeates other aspects of Revenge of the Savage Planet, from the way the open world works to the way you unlock new items to aid in exploration. The game can be played entirely in single-player or co-op. Hutchinson notes that the team wanted the game to feel satisfying no matter which way you play it, and the "key" to doing that was first designing a robust single-player game and then figuring out how to layer co-op elements on top of that. The second player will have all the same tools, and if it's done right can even become an "agent of chaos" for you.

However, the defining trait of Revenge of the Savage Planet is its Metroidvania design. The core loop marches you into dangerous wilds, gathering resources, and completing quests, then coming back to base to craft equipment that in turn lets you explore and reach new areas. The term Metroidvania has become a bit of a buzzword over the years that can encapsulate a lot of different styles of games, but Hutchinson thinks there's a crucial idea that sets Raccoon Logic's apart.

"Metroidvania has definitely occupied the 2D space, but the Metroidvania we're making is more Metroid Prime. And I don't think there's hardly any of those, so the idea is fresh," says Hutchinson. "And we have Metroidvania in an open world, so we had to figure out how we made a gated experience. Most Metroidvania have one lock and one key. Here we have locks that are sort of burnable, which means there's a lot of keys."

Revenge of the Savage Planet, at its core, is an exploration game. Yes, there's combat, guns, and a parry system, but most of what you're doing is poking around the game's four planets to find discoveries, uncover the story, and collect all those sweet upgrades. To that end, that lock system Hutchinson mentioned allows for more variation to how you explore. A cracked wall can be blown up by spraying it with your lava gun to light it on fire, or you can throw a grenade at it if you have one. Electric spray can be used to slow enemies or create paths of electricity to provide power to plants and open doorways or passages.

There are always multiple ways to approach exploring, reinforced by a variety of options you unlock along the way – like a jetpack, double jump, or a lasso that works as both a grappling hook and a way to capture creatures to transport them back to your base. There are so many little options at your fingertips in Revenge of the Savage Planet, and crafting that latest upgrade sets your brain whirring, thinking of all the places you passed by that you might be able to reach now. Even little details from the previous game are more fleshed out here – like the gelatinous bounce pads you throw down, which now let you jump even higher if you bounce multiple times.

Playing with fire

Those Metroidvania elements in Revenge of the Savage Planet feel meticulously thought out and executed to encourage player freedom. You can approach this entire game however you want, unlock things in the order you want, and tackle whichever optional objectives or secrets you want. That's a perfect encapsulation of the game's core theme of being an intrepid space explorer. But the worlds themselves are filled with marvelous little details – like a bizarre bug-eyed alien that lets out a shrill scream and runs when it sees you, or puffy little raccoon creatures you can kick like a soccer ball. This is a game that's a joy to simply run around in and poke things to see what happens.

But perhaps what makes Revenge of the Savage Planet most exciting, is how these elements are streamlined into a focused experience. Too often, open world games feel needlessly overwhelming when you see a map full of objectives that's going to take you hundreds of hours. Revenge of the Savage Planet isn't like that. The game wants you to take your time and soak in the world at your own pace – but in a fittingly hilarious twist for a game this funny, Raccoon Logic knows you have a life to get back to.

"We want you to finish it. It's like Contra – you can play it by yourself, but then I played again just because it was fun, and I played through those old arcade games with my buddy 50 times almost," says Hutchinson, "We're trying to make enough systemic space that it's still funny, or you find something you didn't find before, or you do it in a different way. Hopefully, it's highly replayable, but really, at its core, we just want you to play once and love it."

To see what else is big in 2025, check out our 50 most anticipated video games of the year.