Exclusive: Abubakar Salim shares gameplay of Project Uso, his ‘afro-gothic RPG’

Surgent Studios boss Abubakar Salim has shared the first footage of his next game, Project Uso, exclusively with VGC.

In a new video, which can be viewed below, Salim dives deeper into Project Uso, which was announced last week.

“When my daughter was born, the question of ‘who am I now?’ really kind of hit me,” Salim told VGC “Because if (Tales of Kenzera) Zau was this exploration of ‘who am I without a parent?’ Uso is going to be ‘who am I as a parent?”

The footage presented in the video is from a currently in-production build of the game. Surgent Studios says it’s currently seeking a partner to publish the title.

“The story (with Zau) is that as a shaman you’re challenging the God of Death as a way of looking at the idea of healthy handling grief, so I came up with the idea of what if one reader is inspired to defy death itself, so they create this android which is fashioned to cradle the spirits of the dead.”

Salim also discussed the challenges he’s faced finding funding for the new project, and the health of the video game market.

Thousands of game development jobs have been lost in the past 18 months. Earlier this year, Surgent Studios itself laid off over a dozen developers. 

“With Zau, we didn’t even have anything playable when pitched to EA, but it got signed and it got seen too. Now it’s a different beast, the industry is playing at a different scale,” Salim explained.

“I don’t know what it is, but it’s almost like the reaction from the boom of Covid. People had all the time in the world to play games or watch content, till today when we’re going outside. There is this adjustment, that shaking of the foundations is affecting everyone.

“We’re seeing a lot more people making cautious games rather than bold ones. We need more bold games. We need more exciting games.”

Tales of Kenzera: ZAU was released earlier this year. Published as an EA Original title, the game received generally positive reviews at release, with a Metacritic score of 76.

VGC’s Tales of Kenzera review called it a “challenging, poignant Metroidvania.”