Stars Of Blood – is this Neon Prime? (pic: Valve)
The makers of Half-Life and Portal seem to be working on a new IP, although there’s no clue as to what Neon Prime might actually be.
It will be hard for many younger gamers to believe, but a decade or so ago Valve were renowned as one of the best video game developers in the world. Ever since Portal 2 in 2011 they more or less gave up making traditional games, concentrating only on multiplayer-only titles like Dota2 and VR experiments like Half-Life: Alyx.
Even those releases are few and far between but with the success of the Steam Deck they have promised to make more single-player style games, and it seems the next one might be called… Neon Prime.
Fans noticed that they applied for, and recently received, the trademark for the name, as it applies to ‘Computer game software, electronic game software, video game software, computer game programs downloadable via the internet.’
That does seem to confirm it is a new game, and not a component of Steam or some kind of hardware or peripheral, but there’s no detail on exactly what it is – nor would you expect any from a trademark filing.
You also wouldn’t necessarily expect Valve to announce anything until it’s almost ready to launch, so it’s impossible to guess either what it is or when it might be announced or released.
Neon Prime does sound like a place though, perhaps a planet or sci-fi city, and fans on Reddit have already begun wondering whether the concept art above might be related.
The unannounced project was originally named Stars Of Blood and was supposed to involve space pirates, but the problem with trying to second guess Valve is that they’ve started work on far more games than they’ve ever released, so even if something is in development the odds are it’ll be cancelled long before the public ever gets to see it.
For example, Valve is rumoured to be working on a first person real-time strategy hybrid set in the Half-Life universe, possibly codenamed Citadel.
That could potentially could be what Neon Prime is, but those rumours date back to at least 2021 and while they seemed fairly believable there’s still been no actual proof.
This is lovely concept art, whatever it is (pic: Valve)
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The makers of Half-Life and Portal seem to be working on a new IP, although there’s no clue as to what Neon Prime might actually be.