Sukeban Games, Venezuelan game developer team most known for the cyberpunk bartender game VA-11 Hall-A (2016), has announced new game called .45 Parabellum Bloodhound. Formerly referred to as Project D within the studio, .45 Parabellum Bloodhound is pitched as an “Active Time Action” game. The developers describe it as such:
“You move and dodge in real time while you wait for an Action bar to fill at a speed determined by character and weapon stats. Once that’s done you can then stop time and plan your offensive.”
The designer attributes the battle system’s style to Parasite Eve (1998), a horror role-playing game based on a titular novel by Hideaki Sena.
.45 Parabellum follows Reila Mikazuchi, a mercenary. Reila and the player roam a semi-open atmospheric world with hand-placed encounters. Each level, according to the developers, has a boss fight placed at the ‘end’ of every level. There are seven chapters planned for the game. At the time of this article, five are developed enough to be playable from start to finish.
The release date is purposefully not stated so as to not repeat what happened to N1RV Ann-A, another game developed by Sukeban which has been continuously pushed back into an indefinite hiatus. N1RV Ann-A, a sequel to VA-11 Hall-A, has had developer updates since its inception but due to a multitude of issues such as the developers needing to move out of Venezuela and COVID-19, the game has been shelved indefinitely, possibly until development on .45 Parabellum finishes.
The developers of VA-11 Hall-A are composed of a four man team, but the team for .45 Parabellum Bloodhound is slightly different. Chris acts as writer and director, while the programmer and co-creator of the game is stated to be intentionally anonymous. Merengedoll continues with character/enemy/boss/production design, while Juneji is on soundtrack/design and 3D.
There is no demo at the time due to the developers not wanting to continuously update a separate build, but the developers have brought a build to Bitsummit Drift in Kyoto, happening July 19-21st, 2024.
.45 Parabellum Bloodhound will have Spanish, English, and Japanese localization upon release. The game trailer will be released on July 19th.