Another indie studio from another group of AAA industry veterans has revealed its debut project. This time, the former Epic, EA, Codemasters, Disney, and BioWare veterans at Noodle Cat Games have unveiled Cloudheim, a co-op action RPG with destructible environments all about comboing your enemies into oblivion.
The debut trailer for Cloudheim has everything I could ask for in a video game: a kaiju-sized turtle, multiple muscle ladies, and combat all about hitting dudes with other dudes. Cloudheim's central hook is its combo-based combat, where you can knock enemies into the air, juggle them with other players, toss them into each other, or tear down chunks of the world to drop on their heads.
"Our core gameplay began with a simple question - what if we take the juggling from fighting games, and make it the combat foundation in a co-op action RPG?" according to David Hunt, CEO and founder of Noodle Cat. Hunt previously served as lead systems designer on Fortnite from 2013 through 2022, and before that he was a designer at BioWare on Star Wars: The Old Republic. According to a press release, the studio's "gameplay thesis is based on applying the design principles behind Fornite's explosive growth to create a collaborative physics-based action RPG combat in the gameplay loop of a survival craft game."
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Cloudheim is teasing robust crafting systems and a wide array of locations and dungeons to explore, and given how nice it all looks I'm very much ready to find out what's in store. The game is set to launch in Q3 2025 across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
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