It's been reported that Asobo Studio is working on a sequel to its medieval adventure A Plague Tale: Innocence. This information comes from the French website, XboxSquad, who claim that the game is set to release in 2022 with an official reveal next year.

When contacted by Eurogamer for further comment, A Plague Tale's publisher Focus Home Interactive did not confirm or deny the rumour, explaining that both it and Asobo, "are very proud of the critical and public reception" of A Plague Tale: Innocence, as well as the sales. "We're delighted to have received a solid number of awards and nominations, including for Best Narrative at the Game Awards next week. We want to pursue our efforts to make sure the game gets even more attention from players and we will thus keep promoting that title as it deserves." 

The statement goes on to say: "We announced last year we are partnering with Asobo for a future project but never confirmed if it was a sequel to A Plague Tale or not—and will give more details on that title when the right time comes."

A Plague Tale: Innocence launched in May earlier this year and has since been nominated for Best Narrative at the Game Awards 2019. It tells the grim tale of two orphans as they try and survive the black death in medieval France, avoiding the hordes of swarming flesh-eating rats and running from the Inquisition who want their heads. 

In our A Plague Tale: Innocence review, Malindy gave it a score of 72, saying that its evolving relationships between the characters are golden but the narrative, unfortunately, botches its landing at the very end.

If you've been on the fence about picking up A Plague Tale: Innocence, the rat-infested stealth game, the new free trial might push you off it. You can play through the first chapter of Asobo Studio's miserable sibling misadventure, which is available from today. 

Since Malindy's A Plague Tale review, I've been meaning to take a trip to medieval France. It's a striking, emotional journey, she says, though it can get a bit repetitive and the tone doesn't always fit. I can usually put up with a lot of issues for a good yarn, so I'll at least take the first chapter for a spin. 

If you find that A Plague Tale tickles your fancy, it's conveniently on sale between now and September 16 on Steam. It's part of the Focus Home Interactive publisher weekend, where you can fill your library with Warhammer 40K games, along with the likes of Vampyr and The Surge. 

You can download the demo on Steam now.

Stealthy action adventure game A Plague Tale: Innocence looks stunning, and you'll be able to capture its full beauty in a new photo mode that's coming later this month.

Asobo Studio's creative director David Dedeine made the announcement in a video posted to Twitter on Thursday. He also revealed that a vinyl for the soundtrack would be available "soon".

"Visually beautiful and emotionally affecting thanks to strong characters" was how Malindy's 72/100 review described the game, in which you play a 15-year-old girl sheltering her younger brother from the Inquisition. A photo mode won't fix its main problems—a lack of enemy variety makes it feel samey—but it's a good excuse to jump back in and snap its gorgeous world. 

On a lovely afternoon in autumn, Amicia De Rune is out on a hunt with her father and the family dog, a scene so warm and tranquil you just now things are going to go very wrong very soon. That doesn’t make it any less shocking when Amicia suddenly comes face to face with the Plague, which manifests itself not only as a horrible disease, but as a teeming mass of rats that devours everything in its wake.

Amicia and her father make their way home, only to find the Inquisition at their doorstep. For reasons unknown they want Amicia’s little brother Hugo and are not above slaughtering their way through to him. Due to an illness, the small Hugo’s lived a completely sheltered life and is basically a stranger to his sister, but in the face of death it’s her task to protect him at all costs. A Plague Tale starts off strong with a completely heartrending intro to the linear stealth action-adventure that sees the siblings sneak their way through the family estate while inquisition soldiers make short work of their loved ones.

It’s also an effective introduction to your tools and responsibilities: as Amicia you keep Hugo close during sneaking passages, not letting go of his hand unless absolutely necessary and shielding him from the most gruesome sights. If there’s climbing to be done, Hugo goes up and over first, and he helps open new passages by squeezing through openings his sister won’t fit. Amicia’s sling is a multipurpose item that can be used to distract soldiers by throwing stones at nearby metal items or destroy simple fastenings of draw bridges and the like.

Soon the children make it to a small town. It’s here that not only the plague’s full extent becomes obvious, but also how woefully underprepared Amicia is to take care of a child she hardly knows and who’s fussing about wanting to return home. Hugo’s disobedience is an absolutely realistic source of frustration throughout the game, and a lot of Amicia’s character growth comes from how she handles it. Only a child herself, she can get it wrong and lose her patience, but in consistently strong dialogue she tries her best time and again to impress the seriousness of their situation onto Hugo.

Unfortunately your actions in Plague Tale for the most part don’t support the oppressive atmosphere the narrative builds, mostly because it’s a game that isn’t challenging to begin with, progressively only becomes easier and eventually almost callous. The first time you have to use violence, face a giant swarm of rats or see a pile of dead bodies all feel momentous, until all of these things turn into business as usual.

You start with nothing but your sling and a few stones, which you can use to down enemies that don’t wear helmets. Over time your arsenal grows, thanks to a number of alchemy recipes that allow you to craft bombs, sleeping draughts and rat bait. In theory this should make for a wealth of options in how to get rid of or around enemies, but Plague Tale always strongly communicates the preferred solution, either by placing specific alchemy ingredients nearby or by literally having your companion tell you what to do.

While your options grow, the number of enemy types doesn’t, and towards the middle of the game you’ve seen and fought the same handful of soldiers slowly walking their predetermined routes so often that things feel repetitive rather than threatening. Rats too turn from a horrifying force to a mere annoyance as you gain more and more ways to work around them using light or tasty soldier corpses. 

The amount of violence on display also eventually poses a tonal problem—it’s difficult to believe Amicia to be truly haunted by what she’s doing when’s she’s also dropping chandeliers on people’s heads. The siblings and the friends they make along the way provide an interesting perspective on the many horrors of the 14th century and their evolving relationships with each other are A Plague tale’s great draw, but the plot taking a bizarre towards the end makes a for a botched landing at the last minute.

Rats have gotten top billing in a lot of the preview footage of A Plague Tale: Innocence, but it’s human beings who are the game’s real monsters. That fact is highlighted in a new trailer, appropriately titled “Monsters.”

The new video provides a close-up look at Lord Nicholas, the fellow with the spiky boots and the cross-shaped opening in his face mask. He leads the army of the Inquisition, which is tasked with taking out anyone suspected of carrying the plague—in other words, our young heroine Amicia and her little brother Hugo.

Having seen the opening sequence of A Plague Tale: Innocence myself, I can assure you that Nicholas and his pals are some extremely unpleasant people, enough that they manage to stand out as particularly nasty in a world that is ravaged by plague and countless rats.

You’ll be able to meet these folks for yourself when A Plague Tale: Innocence comes out May 14.

The terrible cacophony produced by the rats in the A Plague Tale: Innocence footage above is enough to put me off animals and videogames forever. They make an unearthly, ear-piercing racket, presumably screaming for their dinner. They're so hungry they'll happily devour a human in seconds. 

It's eight minutes of uncut footage from a new level, showing off a wee bit of everything. As a pair of siblings on the run—only one featured here—you're at a bit of a disadvantage when dealing with the heavily armed Inquisition chasing you, at least head-on. So expect to do a lot of sneaking around, sticking to the shadows and creating distractions so you can slip past nosy guards. 

While the rats are an obstacle, it looks like they'll sometimes come in handy. They don't care if dinner is a guard or a kid, so you can set them on your enemies. Manipulating them is as straightforward as shining some light on them. For some reason these rats are terrified of it, so you can chase them away from some areas, or you can invite them into others, maybe where there's a guard hanging around. 

The atmosphere seems appropriately gloomy and harrowing, the rats are terrifying and the stealth seems fine, but it gets a bit weird when, while sneaking around, Amicia comes across a crafting bench and starts making some ammunition. We can't escape crafting even on a family trip through medieval France.  

A Plague Tale: Innocence is due out on May 14, and a story trailer also went up a wee while ago, so give it a watch below. 

A Plague Tale: Innocence is a game about two children in 14th-century France struggling to escape the soldiers of the Inquisition in a world overrun by deadly swarms of plague-ridden rats. It was unveiled at E3 2017 with a trailer that creeped Joe out pretty thoroughly, and earlier this week publisher Focus Home Interactive announced that it will be out on May 14 and released the first of a series of videos going behind the scenes of the game's development. 

The video focuses primarily on the game's central characters, Amicia and her young brother Hugo, children of a noble family who are left to fend for themselves when their parents are killed. The circumstances are murky, but it sounds like shenanigans: The siblings are in possessions of a "dark secret," which is why the Inquisitors are so eager to hunt them down. 

Interestingly, the children in the game are voiced by actual children, Charlotte McBurney and Logan Hannan. "Both are immensely talented and have their own approach to and opinions of these realistic, troubled characters," Focus Home said. "They were instrumental in the writing process, as they suggested dialogue additions and alternate takes to better fit the children they were embodying. As your constant companions throughout the adventure, their work is as vital as anyone’s to creating a moving, emotional experience that will stick with you long past the first playthrough."

The rat swarms are a maybe a little overly piranha-like, but this is a historically-inspired videogame, not a history lesson—and they look cool, so I'm happy to let it slide. A Plague Tale: Innocence will be available on Steam, and there's a website you can nibble on at aplaguetale.com.