Life is Strange studio Dontnod currently has 6 games in production

Life is Strange's Chloe and Max relax in a diner — (Image credit: Square Enix)

Though Paris-based developer Dontnod Entertainment is best-known for episodic adventure game series like Life is Strange and Tell Me Why, it's also the studio behind sci-fi action-adventure Remember Me and Victorian-era horror RPG Vampyr. When Dontnod's CEO Oskar Guilbert told GamesBeat the studio currently has six games in production, he explained the kind of games it's making might surprise people.

"We don't want to stick to the same thing every time," Guilbert said. "We innovate. We are reinventing ourselves in terms of quality, mechanics, and technology. Finding new ways of telling stories is really important."

The interview mentions action-RPGs and interactive fiction as genres Dontnod is interested in exploring, and notes the studio is well aware of the example set by Telltale Games, who stuck with an initially successful formula long after it had stopped selling (admittedly Telltale had other problems, including mismanagement and bad luck with licensed properties). As Guilbert put it, "we know it is important to renew the mechanics, the look and feel of our games, and not merely change the narrative."

Dontnod's next game is Twin Mirror, a detective story about an investigative journalist with a mind palace and an alter ego who, as Rachel said in her recent preview, "pops up at key moments in the game that have you making important decisions, with choices that impact the rest of the game." Dontnod is self-publishing Twin Mirror, which will be released on December 1, exclusive to the Epic Games Store for a year.

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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.