John Romero's next game is an FPS with "big publisher" backing

John Romero, co-founder of Quake and Doom developer id Software, is hiring for another first-person shooter. 

On Tuesday morning, Romero put out a job post for his company Romero Games, which he founded with award-winning game designer (and wife) Brenda Romero. The Irish studio is working with an undisclosed major publisher on an original IP, and is looking for developers with Unreal Engine 5 experience. 

The Romeros founded their company in Ireland in 2015 and launched their debut title, a roguelike called Gunman Taco Truck, in 2017. In 2020, they released the Prohibition-era strategy-RPG, Empire of Sin. Their next title in development is SIGIL 2, a sequel to their 2019 Doom mod. Empire was the studio's first non-self published game, as it was published by Paradox Interactive. 

All eyes on Unreal 

After going into early access in May 2021, Unreal Engine 5 officially launched in April of this year. The engine was "battle tested" with the release of Fortnite: Chapter 3 in December 2021, and features new animation and modeling tools to let creators iterate in real time. In 2021, Epic also released "MetaHuman," a browser-based app that allows developers to create high-fidelity human characters. 

Romero joins multiple developers who plan on using Unreal Engine 5 to develop their future games. CD Projekt Red announced its multi-year partnership with Epic to use UE5 instead of its proprietary REDengine, beginning with the next installment of the Witcher franchise. Additionally, BioWare and Crystal Dynamics are using the engine to develop the next installments in the Mass Effect and Tomb Raider series.