Former Bungie CEO’s Studio ProbablyMonsters Announces ‘Storm Lancers’ For Switch

After Harold Ryan—the former president and CEO of Bungie—opened ProbablyMonsters in 2016, he stated that the young company wanted to reinvent the way blockbuster games are built, aiming to fashion greener pastures where developers can actually, you know, develop.

Fast-forward to today and the still-young outfit has finally lifted the curtain on its first two projects, and one has been earmarked for Nintendo Switch—and only for Switch. That game is Storm Lancers, a 2-D roguelike that will land on Nintendo’s hybrid “this autumn,” and Ryan underlines in the official announcement:

“These titles are the inaugural public proof-points of the philosophy we’ve been refining out of the spotlight…We remain convinced that there’s a healthier way to craft games—one that nurtures original worlds, puts trust in creators, and hands players moments they’ll never forget. Our method for turning ideas into finished products has shifted. We’ve adapted, and these launch projects mirror a pipeline that is leaner, nimbler, and built to last. This is merely step one, and we’re thrilled to finally let everyone peek at what we’ve been brewing.”

The spiel is uplifting in its own right, and Ryan adds that to tick that “sustainable” checkbox, Storm Lancers is tuned to wrap up in a digestible ten-hour window—music to time-poor ears.

A brief hop over to the official landing page reveals a bright, cartoon-soaked romp that occasionally evokes side-on Borderlands in still images, while the launch trailer above shows off additive two-player gunplay that looks mighty hard to put down.

Co-operative play appears to be king; given the avalanche of augments and armaments crammed into those fleeting clips, obsessive min-maxers who love to tinker with builds before leaping into joint sessions should find plenty to chew on. Here’s more from the press blurb:

Storm Lancers is a roguelike drenched in 1980s-era anime and cartoons, built around combo-heavy brawls and same-sofa co-op. Spearheaded by veterans Jim Veevaert (Microsoft, Zynga) and Seth Thompson (Blizzard), it merges silky combat with a straight-line sense of velocity. Crafted to keep pulses pounding and reflexes twitchy, it turns every jump, slash, and dash into forward momentum across five living, shifting biomes of Cryptica—a sentient orb powered by reality-bending magic. Each new zone throws fresh enemy patterns at the player, escalating the challenge in lock-step with their growth.

Solo adventuring is absolutely allowed, yet the material makes it loud and clear that Storm Lancers was designed to glow brightest in local duo mode, where “two players can delve into the alien expanse side by side, curating complementary playstyles while carving through ruthless creatures and towering bosses.

En route they’ll nab loot that shifts both looks and loadouts, guaranteeing that every escape attempt feels like a brand-new tale.” Swap the aliens for Glasgow taxi queues and it basically mirrors a typical Saturday-night bar crawl.

We’ll round things off with a set of in-game stills.

Does Storm Lancers scratch your itch? Tell us down below.