According to Bloober Team's CEO, Piotr Babieno, the studio chose to develop a Blair Witch game instead of producing a title based on the Saw franchise. Bloober Team released Blair Witch on PC and Xbox One to middling review scores in 2019, then ported the survival horror experience to PS4 and Nintendo Switch several months thereafter. Set a couple of years after the events of the groundbreaking horror film The Blair Witch Project, Bloober's adventure places players in the boots of Ellis Lynch, an ex-police officer who joins the search in a forest for a missing child.
The first-person title limits the player's ability to fend for themselves, primarily equipping Ellis with a flashlight, phone, and camera. A former police dog, Bullet, tags along as well, responding to a variety of commands to assist Ellis in his search for the missing boy. While an interesting experience replete with smart ideas, Bloober's take on Blair Witch ultimately came up short with respect to its execution. Critics and players alike were especially put off by many of the title's half-baked gameplay mechanics, some of which revolved around the crude implementation of Bullet's skillset.
Speaking at the Digital Dragons games conference in Poland (via IGN), Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno revealed that movie studio Lionsgate approached the team, presumably between the releases of Layers of Fear and Observer, to discuss the possibility of joining forces for a licensed game. Impressed by Layers of Fear and Bloober's efforts on Observer, Lionsgate told the studio to choose one of its horror IPs to develop a video game adaptation. According to Babieno, "we could [have chosen] Saw, which is more popular than Blair Witch, but we decided to take Blair Witch because the universe has many opportunities to build something new."
The executive noted that other licensed-based opportunities have cropped up since the crew closed the book on Blair Witch. However, Bloober Team has turned down such offers to instead focus on other works-in-progress. And, apparently, the Kraków-headquartered studio has no less than three different games in development at present.
Notably, the team is developing one such endeavor in conjunction with Konami, a fact that gives some credence to ongoing rumors about Bloober potentially working on a Silent Hill title. Another project will come in the form of a new IP with Outer Worlds publisher Private Division. The third game constitutes another Layers of Fear adventure, which should launch sometime this year.
Blair Witch is out now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.
Source: IGN