Developer Visceral Games made its name through the Dead Space series. The survival horror franchise wowed players from the off through tense, violent gameplay and a disturbing storyline of an alien infection and high-ranking corruption. The first game was released in 2008 through publisher EA, and had two sequels, the last of which arrived in 2013.

After that, Visceral moved on to other projects. The developer has been busy with upcoming Battlefield spin-off Battlefield Hardline. The title, which takes the open warfare of Battlefield into a cops-and-robbers setting, is due to release on March 17 in North America, and has already gone gold. The Battlefield Hardline beta was in full-swing recently, although there were a few issues to address.

It appears as though the developer still has a soft spot for the franchise that made its reputation in the industry, however. Steve Papoutsis, the general manager of Visceral Games, has revealed that the developer would like to revisit the scares of Dead Space in the future. Speaking to gaming magazine GamesTM, Papoutsis spoke of the horror series, and stated that Dead Space is definitely something that Visceral Games would "love to look at again."

It seems there's an understandable emotional attachment to the world of necromorphs and extraterrestrial Markers. "Many, many people here at Visceral have a warm spot in their head for Dead Space," said Papoutsis. "There's definitely a lot of interest internally for us to pick that up again at a future date."

However, the developer currently has other projects as its focus. "Right now we're busy with Hardline and other things," Papoutsis said. Alongside the Battlefield spin-off, Visceral Games has been tasked with creating a Star Wars game, which could be the cryptic "other project" that Papoutsis mentioned. The project has former Uncharted director Amy Hennig at the helm, but other details have been thin on the ground.

It would be interesting to see what Visceral would do next with Dead Space. The series was seen by many to have run out of steam by the end of Dead Space 3, with many criticizing the game's use of microtransactions. EA was also unimpressed with the sales figures for the title, even though Dead Space 3 topped sales charts upon release. That said, the publisher has previously hinted that the door is open for Dead Space 4, and perhaps Visceral's time away could bring a fresh set of eyes to the Dead Space universe.

What do you make of the news? Would you like to see Dead Space return? Or do you think that the franchise's storyline had naturally ran its course at the end of Dead Space 3? Let us know in the comments.

Source: GamesTM