Doom co-creator John Romero is making a new FPS with a 'major publisher'

Id Software co-founder John Romero, one of the key figures behind Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake, is making a new FPS. Romero announced the new project on Twitter today, calling it "a new dawn" for his studio, Romero Games.

"We are 100% focused on first-person shooters, the foundation that built our careers, our studio and a genre," the Romero Games front page now says in a message laid overtop a huge-ass skull. "Our current project is an all-new FPS with an original, new IP. Romero Games is working with a major publisher using state-of-the-art technology—Unreal Engine 5."

Unfortunately, there's no other information about the game available at this admittedly early point. An FAQ on the Romero Games site says "it's way too early to share any other information on it," and co-founder Brenda Romero indicated that the studio isn't rushing into promotion, telling PC Gamer, "We are deliberately not boarding the hype train."

That's understandable. Romero became one of the game industry's earliest full-on superstars during the glory days of id Software, but his first post-id game, Daikatana, fell victim to an over-torqued hype campaign that produced one of the most infamously ill-advised ads of all time—one that Romero said actually damaged his relationship with gamers and the game development community. 

Daikatana wasn't a bad game but the expectations were virtually impossible to meet, and more than 20 years on that promotional campaign, and the spectacular flame-out of Romero's Ion Storm studio, are much more clearly remembered than the game itself. Given all that, it's understandable that Romero Games would take a somewhat more considered approach to PR with this new project.

Job listings on the Romero Games website don't reveal much about the project either, except that there will be a multiplayer component of some sort—probably not surprising in a game coming from the guy widely credited with coming up with the term "deathmatch." It will also apparently have widescreen display support.

Romero Games' last project was Empire of Sin, a promising mob strategy game set in the 1920s that was met with a muted response when it released at the end of 2020. Our reviewer Fraser Brown called it "an ambitious management game that never manages to tie together its big ideas. There's definitely a version of it in there somewhere that's good, and the allure of all those dense and malleable systems is strong, but they all come with massive caveats that dwarf what it does well."