Gauntlet, the much-loved dungeon crawler born in the arcades of the 1980s, will return to PC this summer, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced this morning.
The game will be completely remade, but many of its familiar features will still return, notably Warrior, Valkyrie, Wizard and Elf. The announcement trailer above shows the party bringing down walls and battling against an overwhelming monster horde before making a narrow escape, the basic gameplay seen in the series since its 1985 debut. Each character will have a special attack and other abilities. Dungeons will be procedurally generated.
Gauntlet, WBIE said, will be the first title in its new WB Games Vault portfolio, which will be a series of downloadable games "based on popular Warner Bros. and Midway brands, plus original IP, across multiple digital networks." Other long-time arcade names that WBIE acquired after Midway dissolved in 2008 include Marble Madness, Defender, Robotron, Spy Hunter, Sinistar and Joust. Many were released in an arcade collection released in 2012.
Arrowhead Game Studios is behind the development of the new Gauntlet. It will launch via Steam for PC. Arrowhead is known for Magicka and Helldivers, titles that, like Gauntlet, feature top-down, co-operative gameplay in an arcade style.
"To us at Arrowhead, Gauntlet is one of the most defining games from our childhoods, and it's amazing to be able to work with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment on a brand new version," Johan Pilestedt, CEO of Arrowhead Game Studios, said in a statement. "Gauntlet is one of the original and best known video game properties and we are looking forward to creating a fresh, yet true to the original, take on a multiplayer masterpiece."
WBIE's announcement noted the game would offer "full support for SteamOS and the upcoming Steam Machines shipping the second half of this year."
Gauntlet's first game, by Atari, was a 1985 arcade release, followed by an arcade sequel in 1986. Other versions arrived in 1998 and 2000. The last game under the Gauntlet name was Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, developed and published by Midway in 2005 for PlayStation 2, Xbox and Xbox 360.
