Crackdown 2 developer Ruffian announces Tribal Towers

Crackdown 2 developer Ruffian Games has announced its new game, Tribal Towers.

It is not working on Crackdown 3, it confirmed in a blog post.

"I know, I know it's as shocking as finding out your favourite lasagne is chock-a-block with Red Rum's offspring," Ruffian co-founder Billy Thomson wrote.

"The thing is it's simply not an offer that's on our production table right now, so rather than dwell on this lets get back to the real story here."

Thomson said since the release of Crackdown 2 in 2010 Ruffian has worked on "a number of released titles, just as many prototypes and also some AAA projects that are yet to be released".

It's worked with Kinect, CryEngine and Unity, provided concept art, game assets, code optimisations, gameplay prototypes, Xbox Dashboard apps and even standalone modes for AAA games, it said.

"To be perfectly frank it's been a mixed bag for us at Ruffian, most of the work was genuinely a lot of fun to be part of and we're proud of our contributions, but some of it was a bit of a pain in the hairy tits," he explained.

"That said, while some of the work wasn't as much fun as we would like I can honestly say that we've all learned a lot during every one of the projects we were part of. So in retrospect we've nothing to complain about, really.

"The hardest thing to take for us as a company during this time was not being in control of our own project from the very beginning, we have had to come on to other developers projects late in the day and help them ship their game. Obviously we're extremely grateful for the work as it's kept Ruffian going strong, while other not so fortunate companies have had to close their doors. While we're appreciative, in an ideal world we would far prefer to be responsible for the design of the projects we work on from the first concept and see them right through to release. That's what we set out to do when we created the studio and that is the goal we'll continue to chase as long as we exist."

Thomson said Ruffian can't talk about its secret project with a "well-known publisher", but it can talk about its own self-funded project, inspired by the PC and indie game show Rezzed in Brighton.

"Right now we're continuing work on consoles but we also want to test the water in the Indie scene because it's that scene that seems to be the most innovative and exciting and it allows for smaller teams and shorter development cycles which allow us the agility we all believe we need going forward," Thomson said.

So, what is Tribal Towers? There's little to go on right now, save the above image. Ruffian will add to its blog on a weekly basis as it reveals the game. Next week we're promised an insight into the game's design and, perhaps, a work in progress screenshot.