One year after going on a "short break" Deadly Premonition creator Swery65 retires from Access Games
Swery65 seems to be leaving the games business - or at least his development team.
Deadly Premonition creator Hidetaka Suehiro, better known by his moniker Swery65, announced his retirement from Access Games on Twitter today, despite improvements to his health.
Almost exactly a year ago, Suehiro announced he would be taking a "short break" to focus on managing his reactive hypoglycemia, a blood sugar disorder.
Although it's heartening to learn he's doing better these days, the mention of "day 360" in his tweet suggests Suehiro's decision to leave the company is related to his condition. We'll be sad not to see future games from Swery, and hope he'll continue to act as a mentor to other developers who share his quirky sense of humour and design so that some of his ideas live on. In the meantime, we wish him all the best for his retirement.
Best known for Deadly Premonition, which is wonderful, Suehiro was also a key staffer on portable titles Lord of Arcana and Lord of Apocalypse, as well as D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die.
In other Swery65 news, the designer and director signed up to be one of the 2017 pin-ups in the annual Men of Game Development calendar produced by Roundabout and 100ft Robot Golf developer No Goblin.
Gaming media had a field day talking about Swery's ink, or perhaps just his butt. I don't know who else is in the 2017 calendar but they'll have to produce something spectacular to stand out next to this one. Perhaps Swery is retiring while he still holds the unchallenged title of best butt in video game development pin-ups?