14 DAY TRIAL // With Portal 2 not yet confirmed as being in development at Valve, one of the main people behind the first title has announced that she is leaving the company. Kim Swift, regarded as one of the most innovative game designers in the industry, has said that she is moving to developer Airtight Games, which is currently working on Dark Void. Swift is set to take on the role of project lead at the studio and is said to “build and lead a team in the development of games aimed at a more diverse audience.”
This probably means that she will not be involved in the creation of Dark Void but that she will be free to design a whole new project. She might be working on another concept that is both innovative and easy to pick up, like Portal was when it was released as part of The Orange Box.
Kim Swift herself has delivered a statement saying that “I've learned so much and had some amazing experiences at Valve. But when I heard I had the opportunity to work on innovative titles with my friends over at Airtight, I couldn't pass it up.”
Airtight Games has its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, and the core team comes from the studio that worked on Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge. The developers are now creating Dark Void, a shooter, which emphasizes freedom of movement and jetpack action, set to arrive on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the PC at some point in 2010. Capcom should be handling publishing duties.
Portal was highly lauded for the way it used a simple idea, that of one-way dimensional gates players could control by placing an entry and an exit point, to build complex puzzles and an engrossing narrative.