Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP was originally announced as a remake of the original Lollipop Chainsaw in mid-2022, with developer Dragami Games promising a significant upgrade for modern audiences. ‘Realism’ was described as a focus for the project, as the developer aimed to elevate the original narrative with graphical improvements and significant tweaks – including to its in-game soundtrack. Now, it appears plans for RePOP have shifted, with Dragami announcing the game will now be a remaster with minimal changes.
“We have changed the game design of RePOP from Remake to Remaster based on your requests!” game producer Yoshimi Yasuda announced on Twitter. It’s unclear what this change means, but it does appear RePOP has now been scoped down somewhat.
While the difference between a remake and remaster has been blurred in recent years, the wording here suggests that while Dragami originally planned to reimagine the game from the ground up, RePOP will now be a more faithful re-release, likely with improved character models and textures, and no other significant changes.
Read: Lollipop Chainsaw remake gets new title, and 2024 delay
Notably, Dragami Games has been hard at work on reimagining Lollipop Chainsaw for several years, with plans originally flagging 2023 as a potential launch date for a remake. The game was later delayed by a whole year, as Dragami announced it would need more time for polish.
“Although development of RePOP was carried out with the intention of a 2023 release, our commitment to providing the best possible quality experience to our players led us to making the hard decision to extend the development period in order to ensure this,” Dragami said at the time.
It’s currently unknown whether the decision to remaster the game, rather than remake it, was made ahead of Dragami’s delay announcement. At this stage, a new release date for the game has not been announced, so we can assume the development team is still targeting 2024, despite the newly-revealed design shift.
At this stage, many questions still linger about Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, and the work of Dragami Games. While we’ve seen glimpses of their efforts to reimagine the game, with a scattered array of screenshots revealed, we’re yet to get a significant glimpse at the action.
For now, we’ll have to stay tuned to see what the developer has planned for the beloved cult game.
