John Romero's new FPS "still years away", got major publisher behind, 100-people team

We caught up with John Romero a couple of years ago at Gamelab in Tenerife to talk about FPS in general and more specifically about the status of their own brand-new FPS at Romero Games, which appears to be something that hasn't been done before in the genre, as he told us back then. Now we got to meet up again in Cascais for the DevGAMM and the man gave us a bit of an update in the following interview:

"It's a shooter. It's a first-person shooter", Romero reminds everyone in the video as we're talking about the co-creator of the genre. "We have a major publisher behind us. If the game wasn't innovative and unique enough, of course, you wouldn't get funded if you didn't have something like that. So look for something that's a little different".

Romero earlier corrects us as the FPS team at the Irish studio is now "at 80 [people], about to get to 100 pretty soon". Furthermore, it's known that it's being built on Unreal Engine 5 and that the game is still years away, so currently in early-mid development. And when will FPS fans get to learn more? That call is up to that major, mysterious, TBA publisher.

What do you expect from John and Romero Games more than 30 years after the original Doom? Watch the full video for more on the creation of the game that started it all, including quite technical remarks from back in the nineties. John Romero published the book Doom Guy: Life in Person last year to retell the story of its creation and to share a message of positivity in game dev.