EALA Vets Form Haunted Temple, Announce XBLA/PC Turn-Based Strategy Game

A group of development veterans most recently worked at Electronic Arts Los Angeles has formed independent developer Haunted Temple Studios, whose first project is the Advance Wars-inspired Skulls of the Shogun for Xbox Live Arcade and PC. Comprised of four team members and announced on the game's official site, Haunted Temple was spearheaded by artist Jake Kazdal, who first become known for his work on Space Channel 5 and Rez at Sega's United Game Artists. Kazdal moved to EA LA, where he contributed to numerous games including Steve Spielberg's stalled LMNO project as well as Command & Conquer 4 -- whose team was told it would be largely laid off after the game's completion. "I hate to say it but EA LA laying everyone off was the best thing that ever happened to me!" Kazdal said in a 1UP interview. "To be able to cherry pick some of the best developers I had ever worked with to work on my own game was just the most phenomenal thing ever." The other three members of Haunted Temple are designer and programmer Borut Pfeifer, programmer Ben Vance, and audio developer Sam Bird, all of whom worked on either LMNO, Command & Conquer 4, or both. Skulls of the Shogun's official site describes the game as "an invigorating cocktail of 1960s-flavored sorcery and strategy," aiming to push the turn-based strategy genre forward by maintaining an elegance in gameplay with evolutions to interface, graphics, and tactical options. Haunted Temple hopes to complete the game on Xbox Live Arcade and PC within six to nine months, and is considering other platforms, including iPad, in the future.