Avalanche working on new game

Just Cause 2 awaits a late March release but already Swedish developer Avalanche is onto its next, unannounced project.

"You know, of course I can't tell you," lead designer Peter Johansson told Eurogamer when asked what else the developer was working on, "but some really cool stuff."

"It's not a puzzle game! But you may be surprised. It's fun. There's going to be stuff exploding in that game! That's all I can tell you."

The new game will not be The Hunter nor AionGuard, the dragon-riding magical shooter that Avalanche had to incinerate due to lack of publisher interest.

"The lay-offs in Avalanche have nothing to do with Just Cause 2, because that was another project that we worked on. That was also cancelled. Lots of people saying, 'Oh that's fantastic, the best thing we've seen, but...'" added Johansson.

Just Cause 3 isn't out of the question; Johansson said he can already think of many directions the series could go, name-dropping multiplayer and deeper community elements.

"One of the strengths of the Just Cause franchise is a clear sense of direction. It's found its own identity with the insane stunts and action and fun factor. For a possible sequel I could just brainstorm for 10 minutes and list a lot of directions I would like to take it.

"When you finish a game there's always a long list of stuff you think, 'Phew, for the next game we're going to this and this and this and this,'" he offered.

"With the online presence we can do a lot more, we could be really strong. Might mean multiplayer, but there's also other stuff, other directions that are really cool - building a community around it. If I do a base-jump it would be really cool to see how my friends had done."

Johannson explained that implementing multiplayer would take "a lot of resources" and there is immense pressure to outperform games like Modern Warfare 2 to attract and retain a healthy online community.

Whatever the game turns out to be, Johansson said plenty of alterations will need to be made to the Just Cause 2 engine, which suggests a quick turnaround is out of the question.

"I actually think we will [redo the engine, again]! We're probably not going to be completely happy. We're probably going to do lots of adaptations to make it suitable for our next game," he said.

"And of course we have the Hunter game that we're working on as well, which is an experiment for us - and that engine has a lot of differences to the Just Cause 2 engine as well."

The Hunter is, as the title suggests, a game about killing animals. It's an online-activated affair for PC and is billed as, "The most realistic hunting game you will ever play." Go and see for yourself on The Hunter website.

Check out our latest Just Cause 2 hands-on preview elsewhere on the site today.