The Darkness, Chronicles of Riddick director joins Indiana Jones team

Chronicles of Riddick and The Darkness director Jens Andersson has joined MachineGames to lead design on its Indiana Jones game, he’s confirmed to VGC.

Andersson will act as design director on the title and work in parallel with creative director Axel Torvenius – who was previously art director for the Wolfenstein games – and with executive producer Jerk Gustafsson at the helm.

The design director will be familiar with his new colleagues, as like many at the Swedish studio, he previously worked at Starbreeze. Andersson also contributed to many of MachineGames’ previous titles as a freelance designer.

In total, more than 20 developers who worked on 2007’s The Darkness are on the Indiana Jones team, VGC understands.

In addition, Andersson spent several years at LucasArts around a decade ago, where he was originally hired to work on another cancelled Indiana Jones game.

Since leaving LucasArts, Andersson created the BAFTA-winning indie game Yoku’s Island Express and Switch art title Colors Live.

“I’ve now taken the next big step, which is to join MachineGames as Design Director on Indiana Jones,” he said in a statement.

“This is also redemption. When I accepted the offer to go to San Francisco in 2009, it was to lead the design on an Indiana Jones game, but that game got cancelled before I even got there.

“Now, I get a chance to do what I originally hoped to, but this time I get to do it with some of my oldest and best friends. Joining MachineGames is like coming home – amazing people I worked with during Riddick and Darkness, but also teeming with new ones, whose talent daily blow me away.”

He added: “I’m so excited about what we are building, and the way we get to do it – featuring one of most iconic characters ever, in collaboration with my friends at Lucasfilm (hi Craig!), published by one the biggest publishers in the world, and doing it at an amazing studio like MachineGames.

“This will be something very special.”

Announced in January 2021, the Indiana Jones game will tell an original, standalone story set at the height of the famed adventurer’s career, according to Xbox-owned MachineGames.

Earlier this week, Bethesda’s Todd Howard said the Indiana Jones game is a “unique” genre mash-up.

Further reading

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MachineGames’ Indiana Jones title is a ‘unique genre mash-up’, says Todd Howard

“It is a definite love letter to Indiana Jones”

Howard, who’s serving as executive producer on the game, was asked if it will have an action adventure side to it during an interview with the Lex Fridman podcast.

“I would just say it’s a mash-up,” he responded. “It is a unique, it isn’t one thing intentionally, so it does a lot of different things”.

He said Wolfenstein developer MachineGames is “the perfect fit for this game, with storytelling and how they record it”, and that the studio is “doing an incredible job”.