Hydrophobia Prophecy coming to Steam May 9th, PSN later

After Hydrophobia's lackluster reception, developer Dark Energy Digital created Hydrophobia Pure, an update which patched in improvements based on critical feedback. For Steam and PSN, it's re-reinventing the game with Hydrophobia Prophecy, adding "upgraded graphics, brand new gameplay mechanics, exclusive new levels, a reworked back story, a dramatic new ending, recast voice acting and much, much more" to XBLA's Hydrophobia Pure.

"We could’ve just ported Hydrophobia Pure over to Steam and PSN after the positive response it received, but we decided to go much further," said director Pete Jones. "The community really blew us away with the incredible response to Hydrophobia Pure and the outstanding level of feedback on the listening post, so we wanted to return the favour and ensure we created a bigger and better experience in every possible respect with Hydrophobia Prophecy for Steam and PSN."

A new in-game feedback system called Darknet will allow Hydrophobia Prophecy players to send the developer opinions with contextual information about the game state automatically included. Responding to player feedback is one thing, but it sounds like Dark Energy is essentially turning us into QA testers (is that good or bad?).

"In the modern, interconnected world we think there should be better lines of communication between players and developer, which is exactly what Darknet delivers," said Jones.

"Gamers have shown us how much they appreciated being involved in the development process and we have responded. We’re really excited to be bringing Hydrophobia Prophecy and Darknet to PC using Steamworks because the ability to update the game seamlessly and regularly through Steam is a perfect fit for our commitment to acting upon feedback from the community. It also means we can update the Darknet system itself to ensure we continually adapt to serve players who want to participate more effectively."

Hydrophobia Prophecy will debut May 9th on Steam for the discounted pre-order price of $10.19 / £7.64, and come to PSN at a later date. There's no word yet on an actual sequel to Hydrophobia, but there's no harm in perfecting the first game before moving on to the rest of the planned trilogy.

Apr 26, 2011