How Ex-Just Cause Dev’s Samson Aims to Be Like ‘Mad Max…Payne’

All it took for Samson to pique my curiosity was a precise little teaser connected societal media, and past a follow-up station by the crippled manager that described it “more similar Mad Max…Payne” meant it had my attention. And then, erstwhile it was officially announced earlier this month, my involvement instantly skyrocketed.

It’s a gritty transgression play being developed by Liquid Swords, a squad made up of a fig of erstwhile Just Cause developers. It’s owed retired aboriginal successful 2026 connected PC for $25, with console versions planned for aboriginal release. In it, you play Samson McCray, who finds himself successful the metropolis of Tyndalston aft a occupation helium was the getaway operator for went atrocious successful St. Louis. His sister, Oonagh, had warned him not to instrumentality the job, and definite capable she was right. But she managed to chopped a woody with the St. Louis crew: Samson has to wage backmost what was lost, with interest. And that’s wherever this crippled begins: with our titular anti-hero staring down a indebtedness that’s accruing involvement each day, needing to instrumentality immoderate jobs helium tin successful bid to whittle the indebtedness down.

Combat is hand-to-hand. Health pickups are bottles of painkillers (hello, Max Payne!), you’ll bash plentifulness of driving (hello, Mad Max!). And the world, says workplace laminitis and crippled manager Christofer Sundberg, volition “push back” connected your action. “We've had this motto from the opening that the metropolis is simply a quality successful itself,” helium explained. “So the much you poke around, the much the satellite volition react. Interacting with radical connected the street, objects, doing worldly that is unexpected to the satellite – it's rather a depressing town. The satellite volition react. We person a peculiar communicative astir instrumentality enforcement and wherefore guns are exclusive to instrumentality enforcement and truly hardened criminals. And the satellite remembers what you've done. You won't get distant with everything. There volition beryllium a absorption to your actions.”

Oh, and astir that “more similar Mad Max…Payne” comment? When asked to elaborate connected that, Sundberg told me, “[Some of] the squad that worked connected the Mad Max is moving connected Samson, and we're taking that [experience] 10 years successful the future. The code is arsenic acheronian arsenic Mad Max. It's not a post-apocalyptic world. [And] 1 of the top municipality crippled stories ever told is Max Payne. [So] I conjecture it's the code that I'm after.”

Samson primitively had a overmuch larger scope with a overmuch larger team. But successful aboriginal 2025, Sundberg and workplace enactment made the hard determination to laic disconnected astir fractional of the team.”We made a precise pugnacious determination to standard down the squad owed to marketplace conditions and however overmuch occupation the manufacture is successful close now. It stung a batch to person to fto them spell and it besides meant that we had to alteration our focus. We shelved much of the heavier RPG worldly we worked connected – our mentation of base-building – due to the fact that we didn't person the bandwidth anymore.”

And so, the squad that remains, it meant trying to present a narrower-but-still-deep experience. “It was primitively a 100-hour experience. Now it's much of a quick-and-dirty session-based experience. Completionists volition get to walk astatine slightest 25 hours. But we are precise respectful of people's time.” And that reduced scope is reflected successful the $25 terms point, too. “We spot this arsenic the archetypal publication successful a bid of books to beryllium told astir the metropolis and character.

“It's tiny compared to Just Cause 2, but it's dense,” helium continued. “The size of the satellite isn't the issue, it's much astir however we capable it with meaningful content. We ever accidental that it's ‘big enough’ and it's precise scalable.”

Getting backmost to gameplay, Sundberg says Samson is inspired tonally by films similar Heat, Ronin, French Connection – stories, successful his words, “where unit is accelerated and decisive.” And that power is beauteous wide connected the screen. Samson looked to my oculus similar it was acceptable successful the 1970s, but Sundberg says it is successful information the ‘90s, chosen specifically for the furniture of grit the decennary inactive had caked connected it. “We played astir with the individuality epoch situation that the '90s was. Cell phones didn't truly beryllium but they were inactive around. Cash was inactive king and radical were inactive smoking.”

I saw a ngo played wherever Samson wandered extracurricular into a seedy neighborhood. He jumped into a musculus car and drove to a ngo waypoint that offered $1000 to beryllium a getaway driver. After switching cars and gathering astatine the pickup constituent – successful an concern country that was inactive precise seedy – the planned burglary happens, the building’s alarm goes off, your crewmates get in, and you person to flight the pursuing police. The other wrinkle is that the cops person a chopper looking for you too, truthful it means you’ll request to enactment other hard to shingle them. After plentifulness of driving astir – Tyndalston seems reasonably large, but again, don’t expect it to beryllium jammed afloat of open-world activities to bash – you yet duck disconnected a roadworthy successful an alley, nether an overpass, crook disconnected your headlights, and suffer the pursuing police.

The adjacent ngo I saw was a deed that tasked maine with going into a nine called Chubb’s, uncovering the manager, and having to combat my mode done – sometimes bare-knuckled, and sometimes with a crowbar successful hand. Eventually you tin physique up your adrenaline metre and trigger an adrenaline rush, allowing you to deed harder for a abbreviated play of time. This beatdown earned america $1000 to sound disconnected of Samson’s debt.

Though my demo was little – possibly 15 minutes oregon truthful – I saw capable to truly similar however Samson is shaping up. The Liquid Swords squad is seemingly aiming to present a AAA acquisition astatine a AA scope and terms (there’s much info successful an FAQ connected the Steam leafage if you’re interested). If they tin propulsion it off, past Samson has a accidental to beryllium good worthy its debased asking price.