Empulse is a Titanfall-inspired shooter from the Splitgate studio

1047 Game says its new game, Empulse, is now its 'main priority'

In an interview with Polygon ahead of the shooter’s reveal, 1047 Games CEO Ian Proulx explained how the project came together over the last year and how the studio plans to juggle it alongside Splitgate: Arena Reloaded. While Proulx says that 1047 will continue to support Splitgate, Empulse is the studio’s “main priority” at present.

Empulse is a 6v6 arcade shooter with an emphasis on movement and mechs, combined with Splitgate’s hip-fire combat feel. It’s very explicitly inspired by EA’s Titanfall series, with wall-running and grappling hooks that let players fluidly navigate a map. The difference is in how Empulse handles mechs. They function more like power weapons that players have to fight over, rather than tools that each player can call down. Proulx likens it to fighting over a rocket launcher in Halo, and says that movement is the main attraction.

“We looked very closely at some of our favorite and the best movement shooters out there, like Titanfall 2, Black Ops 3, some of the movement CODs. But we also looked at non-shooting games,” Proulx told Polygon. “Do you remember SSX Tricky? One of the things we took inspiration from there was that feeling of, like, you're in that flow state. You're wall running, you're grappling, you're sliding, and then you're bouncing off these jumps. We had this vision of, what if instead of it just being your typical jump pad or man cannon, it was actually more like a snowboard jump?”

While there are no portals in sight, Empulse also takes inspiration from Valve’s Portal series, as did Splitgate. Specifically, it riffs on Portal 2’s paint mechanic. Players have P.A.I.N.T. Bombs (Plasma Activated Infusion of NanoTech) that they can toss on surfaces to gain extra speed or jump boosts. Proulx says that those can be chained together with all the game’s movement systems to create a shooter where players are never standing still. He says that Empulse’s multiple modes will reflect that.

What’s surprising about Empulse is how quickly it came together during a strange year for 1047 Games. Proulx says that development began a year ago, which would place it right around the time that Splitgate 2 launched on stage at Summer Game Fest. Proulx stirred up controversy during the announcement by wearing a “Make FPS Great Again Hat” while giving a speech about the sorry state of the modern shooter. Players didn’t seem to think that Proulx was putting his money where his mouth was. Splitgate 2 launched with pricey microtransactions and a host of issues that ruffled feathers within the game’s community.

One month later, 1047 Games “unlaunched” Splitgate 2, laying off an undisclosed number of employees. The shooter would relaunch as Splitgate: Arena Reloaded in December 2025, but the game struggled to regain momentum. “The reality is the player base is just not big enough,” Proulx admitted when explaining why Empulse has become the studio’s focus.

It turns out that the team was quietly spinning up Empulse behind the scenes as that drama was unfolding. The project began as two separate Splitgate prototypes that the team would eventually combine into one project. One was for a snowboarding-like system where players would slide down a hill into a portal. The other was for a long-requested feature from fans: wall-running.

“We have a lot of Titanfall fans in the company. We've seen it even in our community,” Proulx said. “A lot of people have asked for wall-running over the years, actually. And so that was one of the things we actually prototyped in early 2025, and we ended up not putting it into the game because we're like, ‘This just doesn't really work and none of the maps were built for this. This is about portals.’”

After toying around with the prototypes, Empulse began development with a 15-person team inside 1047 Games. (That’s coincidentally the number of people who spun up the original Splitgate, Proulx said.) While there are still employees working on Splitgate: Arena Reloaded, the bulk of the studio — roughly 100 people following the 2025 layoffs — has since moved its attention to prepping Empulse for an early access launch.

The timeline puts Proulx’s now-infamous Summer Game Fest speech in a new context. “I’m tired of playing the same Call of Duty every year, and I wish we could have Titanfall 3!” Proulx said at the time, to applause from the live crowd. Now, that sound bite comes off like a teaser meant to set the stage for Empulse when it was in early development. Proulx believes that shooting fans actively want something like Titanfall, which gives 1047 a leg up over other live-service games that have struggled to gain traction.

“If I look at live-service games that haven't done well, there's a million reasons, right? It's such a difficult industry,” Proulx said. “I think one of the reasons that certain games haven't done well is chasing trends, instead of trying to provide something players are asking for. And honestly, we're partially guilty of that. I think we had our own unique take on things, but I think this time around it's: let's just make this type of game. It doesn't have to be the next Fortnite, it doesn't have to be the next Call of Duty. We think this is a game that players are asking for.”

Empulse is a reset for 1047 Games in a way. The original Splitgate began as a small passion project that found organic popularity in 2022, thanks to the help of a dedicated community that offered feedback during early access. Its surprise success saw the studio trying to meet player demand on the fly by reworking the game into a “AAA” project. The studio staffed up and even began redoing the game’s art style from the inside out, before eventually halting development and starting a sequel from scratch. 1047 Games would play Splitgate 2 much closer to the chest (Proulx said that the team was “paranoid” about leaks), which limited the feedback the team received on it ahead of launch.

1047 Games seems to be coming back down to earth after that messy ordeal. “We're not trying to sell a million copies on day one,” Proulx said. Instead, the goal this time is to build something sturdy that the team is proud of and shape it alongside players who are eager for a game like it in early access.

Even if 1047 Games is going back to what made Splitgate work, it has a tough mountain to climb. The studio has asked players to trust it multiple times over the past four years, and that trust hasn’t always paid off. Moving away from Splitgate while it was still in development to work on Splitgate 2 didn’t go as planned. And now Splitgate players who stuck around for the sequel’s relaunch are once again watching the studio shift resources to another game. Is there enough goodwill left in the tank? Proulx hopes so, but he knows it’s going to require a lot of patience.

“Ultimately, we have something that I think is just really freaking fun,” he said. “My hope is players will focus on that, but I know it's going to take time. I think this is also why we're trying to get back to the approach that worked for us in the first place, which was to put the game out there, get constant feedback, iterate based on that feedback. That's really what we did with the relaunch of Splitgate 2.”

So, what does that mean for the future of Splitgate: Arena Reloaded? That’s less clear. Proulx did confirm that the studio will work on both games at once (he said that his goal for 1047 Games was always for it to operate as a multi-game studio), but he repeatedly noted that Empulse is now the main priority. Aspirationally, he’s hoping that Empulse will find success and that will rub off on Splitgate: Arena Reloaded, as new players fall in love with 1047 Games’ approach to arcade shooting. But realistically, don’t expect more game-changing overhauls anytime soon.

“I still do believe in it. I really do. I think it's a great game. I think it needs sort of a…” Proulx said of Splitgate: Arena Reloaded before pausing to think. “I mean, I don't know what it needs, to be honest.”