Former Metro developers unveil La Quimera, a single-player FPS set in a Latin American cyberpunk world, backed by Hollywood expertise.

Ukraine-based independent games studio Reburn have just announced a new shooter, La Quimera, which I would summarise as Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Cyberpunk 2077 playing kiss-chase in the near-future jungles and neon sprawls of Latin America. It’s got world and narrative writing from Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn, and is playable in single player with three-person co-op support. Here’s a trailer.

Who are Reburn exactly? Apparently, they’re a rebrand of former Metro developers 4A Games Ukraine, with 110 people on the books including “lead gameplay designers, artists, sound engineers, programmers, and more from across the entire Metro series”. The project lead is Sasha Kostiuk, who was gameplay and AI designer for Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light and Exodus. Reburn’s CEO and founder is Dmytro Lymar, previously director and CEO of 4A Games Ukraine.

While all this may seem quite cut-and-dried, there’s actually scope for some confusion about who and what is or isn’t 4A Games. I asked the PR for clarification and have now been educated. To briskly recap, 4A Games began life in Ukraine back in 2006, working on Metro 2033. In 2014, a portion of the team split off to found a new studio in Malta in response to political instability in Ukraine.

The two studios retained close connections, however, agreeing to share the 4A Games trademark and 4A’s engine technology. They collaborated on Metro Exodus. Then, in 2020, celebrated mass-redundancy peddlers Embracer bought 4A Games Malta. Around about the same time, 4A Games Ukraine got funding for an original project, La Quimera. Now, they’re working on it as a wholly separate outfit – though they’re keen, naturally, to cash in on their association with the Metro series.

Returning to La Quimera, it casts you as “a down-on-their-luck PMC soldier” with a customisable exosuit. “Fans of the Metro series will enjoy familiar tense gunplay and intimate storytelling combined with new game experiences through unique and highly detailed environments, characters and weapons,” comments the release.

My thoughts right now are 1) I get the gentlest frission of Gears Of War’s squad narrative from the quieter parts of the trailer, and 2) those guns are so wildly overfaceted I can’t decide which bit is the business end. It’s like they were crafted from Rubix cubes. The greebling appears to be eating the wielder’s hands. I dread to think what graphics card adverts look like in La Quimera’s cyberpunk future.

Find out more about La Quimera on Steam. Release date as yet there is none.