Sci-fi writer Alan Dean Foster is going to play with Pomme’s studio deal for Midworld — alone

Best-selling science fiction and fantasy author Alan Dean Foster is starting to work on several licenses with studio Pomme, starting with a game based on his classic book Midworld.

Foster told me this in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat.

A New York Times bestselling author, Foster has written several book series, more than 20 novels, and screenplays for movies including Star Wars, Alien, Terminator, Transformers and Star Trek. He’s written about sports in the past, but now he’s doing a major license for his many works in the HumanX Commonwealth series.

Pomme begins with Midworld, the first book in the series where humans encounter an alien race on a jungle-like planet. Some say this country inspired James Cameron’s Avatar movies, but we won’t go there. Enough for today is a well-crafted world that Foster told me in an interview makes the universe a game.

Pomme founder Darryl said in an interview with GamesBeat that Foster will work closely with the game’s team as a consultant. Pomme, a consulting company with many games under its belt, will assemble a team to create the first game and implement plans for several games.

Under the agreement, Pomme can make at least 14 of Foster’s works into games, including previously published books and eight unpublished works, released in a series called “Alan Dean Foster Presents….”

As mentioned, the first will be the adaptation of Midworld – the book that launched the Humanx Commonwealth, which will be published by Pomme’s publishing arm Sunset Sugar Studios on PC via Steam in 2026.

Foster said, “I’m looking forward to working with the amazing people at Pomme as they plan to develop and release several games based on my stories, the first of which is planned to be Midworld.”

Pomme was founded by industry veteran Darryl Still, a former executive at Atari, EA, Nvidia and Kiss. He has over 40 years of experience in the gaming industry. He is joined by Canadian director of operations Jillian Mood, who has worked with Canada Game Expo, Ottawa Game Jam, Bendy & the Ink Machine and more than 30 games. He will lead marketing and HR for the company.

Other Pomme executives include Vice James who has the project to run many Kiss games during the 12 years he was CEO of the company; and Mateo Młodowski, founder of the hugely successful Pixel Puzzles franchise and executive director at Sunset Sugar Studios, publisher of Pomme.

“I’ve been working with Alan and the Pomme team for almost a year now to complete the project and it’s very exciting to press the green button as we enter 2025 on what is one of the most exciting projects I’ve had. It worked,” said Still.

And Mood said, “Alan Dean Foster is very intelligent and wanted to be involved in the development of this game, it makes me very proud.”

Pomme is collaborating with key members of Cuphead’s art team, including acclaimed artist Tina Nawrocki, to lead the art on Midworld. Pomme studio head Mateo Młodowski said, “As soon as we started talking to them, it was clear that they were perfect for creating Börn and the other characters in the universe. The skills they bring to art and animation are amazing.”

Meanwhile, Pomme has set up an advisory group of entertainment giants to help manage Alan Dean Foster’s operations. It includes Alan Wilson, cofounder of Tripwire Interactive, publisher of Killing Floor and Red Orchestra, and Jon Radoff, CEO of Beamable, who has worked on Game of Thrones, Star Trek and Walking Dead games.

The beginning of the contract

Foster, 78, has published 80 books, including seven short stories and more than 40 screenplays. (I read Foster’s Star Wars novels, including Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, back when I was a kid).

He also established Pomme in the United Kingdom in April 2020 as an international business consultant. Major contributors include Vice James, Jillian Mood, and Matteo Mlodowski. Pomme (French for Apple) is named after Still’s love of Pomeranian dogs.

He also said he was talking to a friend who was making a documentary about Foster’s life. The friend contacted them to explore ideas for publishing a play based on Foster’s unpublished works. Foster also mentioned the HumanX Commonwealth universe, and the team decided to make a triple-A game focusing on Midworld, the first in the series, He said.

“Midworld fits well with our technical team, which comes from Cuphead and 2D action adventure properties. We also have an Unreal Engine 3D shooting team that can do great things with the trilogy,” he said. “We have given 14 licenses from Alan and we are looking for the right teams to develop each game. Some of these will be brief and Alan will explain them.”

He added, “We want to make the right game for the right things and make him proud. He has retro fans and we can introduce them to new players, and we have a good team of people to do that.”

Sunset Sugar Studios is the publisher with a publishing account on Steam. Via Mood, however is looking for funding from the Canadian Media Fund. Another group that is available is from Turkey. It’s a small group, but with big ambitions, he said.

“This is because of the interest of people who are crazy about doing this,” Foster said. “And there are books like Midworld, which they’ve started with, that can easily be turned into games. And luckily, there’s enough content. I’m happy to be a part of that.”

Writing games?

Foster said he wrote the story for The Moaning Words, a Lovecraft-themed puzzle card game that debuted in 2014. as the player reads them in-game.

“It was very difficult, but it was very interesting. I enjoyed it. My history with games goes back. I also made a computer game called Shadowkeep for Trillium,” he said. “That was a thousand years ago. I also made a version of LucasArts’ The Dig game. So I have been involved in non-participating sports for a long time. “

Foster said that he believes that the game captures events like movement well, and that he has to write events like this over and over again in his various works. However, in the beginning, the technology of the game could not keep up with the imagination. Now that problem is over as gaming technology has advanced rapidly.

HumanX Commonwealth Games

“Some projects didn’t live up to the promise, but they were interesting experiments. With games, you have a lot of options and I like the possibilities,” he said. “With Midworld, we have a story with different levels.

The Commonwealth series has many characters like Philip Lynx, who appears in 15 books of the series. There are many books and they are all part of the sci-fi universe, and fantasy stuff. The HumanX Commonwealth is like the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek, where in the future the people of Earth have allied with other alien species such as the insectoid Thranx from Hivehom.

“Thank goodness for computers and fans, or I wouldn’t be able to control this,” Foster said.

He said he is happy to see more transmedia successes, where games have been turned into movies like The Super Mario Bros. Movies and TV shows like The Last of Us.

“Technology is moving forward along with storytelling,” he said. “You started scratching pictures on the walls of the caves. They didn’t move, and they weren’t very interesting. And now we’re just moving along, and every time technology advances, someone finds a way to change it for fun. And that’s what happened with the game. And when it comes to being perfect enough, you can take the game and develop it into a movie or TV show. It would be interesting to think, for example, if Tolkien were alive today, at the age of 22, would he have started writing books or would he have started the game?

Foster added, “Everything changes so fast. It makes me happy. I love things. And the newest thing that comes along, I’m there. I want to be with them.”

As for the latest movies, Foster said he was a big fan Walkwhich has no dialogue. As for tech entrepreneurs who are always trying to turn science fiction into reality, Foster has other ideas.

“They get so caught up in things, I think, and they’re so far away from people that they’re supposed to be serving that they forget what it’s like,” Foster said. “I haven’t met many of them and I would be happy to sit down and chat.” I don’t know. You wonder if you can have an influence on people. In my books, I try to be gentle. I don’t believe in chatting or shouting.”