There’s a new Commander Keen coming, but it’s not much like the old Commander Keen. The new one is a mobile game focused on having you blast aliens with goofy gadgets, and – look. There are loads of truly excellent mobile games out there, and Bethesda has successfully expanded on existing series with games like Fallout Shelter in the past. But Commander Keen has been gone so long, this revival is tougher to accept.
But Commander Keen on mobile is probably not made for us, as id co-founder John Romero diplomatically tells Game Informer. “When I saw the game video, I was like ‘well that’s not a platformer the way that Keen was a platformer.’ My thought was that the designer behind it must not be making this Keen for the people who played Keen originally,” Romero says.
“I think they want to take it in a different direction, and it seemed to me that it was an experimental gameplay kind of thing. Because I haven’t played a game like it. Maybe this is like ‘let’s introduce this IP and do something interesting and new with it, for an audience that is not the people that used to play Keen, but that play a bunch of mobile games.’”
He says “I don’t play stuff like this, but maybe there is already an audience that does that. And maybe this will catch fire because it hits all those people who do play stuff like that.”
Romero did say he enjoyed the cartoon in the trailer, so there’s that, at least.
Read more: Check out the best old games on PC
Right now, Romero is working on a mobster-themed strategy game called Empire of Sin. For more on all the E3 2019 games – but mostly the ones releasing on PC – check back with us throughout the week.