"Mad Max ... Payne": Former Just Cause boss's new studio channels Max Payne in apocalyptic teaser trailer showing a grungy open world

Liquid Swords – the new studio from Avalanche Studios co-founder and former Just Cause director Christofer Sundberg – has just released a blueberry-sized morsel of a teaser for its currently unnamed first game.

This is a nine-second clip of what appears to be a ruined, gray city, which looks as industrial and abandoned as a parking lot at midnight. The only action on its lonely streets are a handful of cars going reasonably fast, and there are some flashes of muted light on the surface of its surrounding river. But Sundberg says on Twitter that the game – which Liquid Swords only refers to as Game 1 at the moment – will eventually be something "more like … Mad Max …. Payne."

"All respect to developers of fantasy/sci-fi games," Sundberg says about Liquid Swords' apparent preference for gritty realism, "but it’s just not for us."

Sundberg created Liquid Swords in 2020, and the developer's website currently explains it hopes to collect 100 employees, "our optimal number for zero-nonsense game development," by "early 2024." In February 2025, the studio made the "deeply regrettable" decision to cull some of its workforce, before it had the chance to even properly announce what it calls "a narrative-driven, open-world, hardboiled AAA revenge story, built and developed in Unreal Engine 5." Presumably, this is the same game that Liquid Swords teases now.

The Stockholm-based studio notably boasts a culture of no crunch ("Let's say that again," says its website, "no crunch!"), and it proudly displays a bunch of Air Jordans in its meeting room.

With similar excitement, Sundberg accompanies Liquid Swords' teaser trailer with a mission statement: "Be accountable. Work hard. Be human. Win." These are words Mad Max Payne would want you to live by.

Here are some of the best open world games to play right now and completely forget real life exists.