Leisure Suit Larry’s creator tells us what’s next for the hapless lothario

UPDATE: Replay Games reached out to Digital Trends to clarify series creator Al Lowe’s comments below regarding a Leisure Suit Larry 2 remake. Thoughts are already turning to what will come after the launch of Reloaded, but we’ve been assured that there’s no possibility at all of a 2013 release for Larry 2.

ORIGINAL POST: It’s been a good long time since Larry Laffer got to dust off his leisure suit to have a good smutty time with game players. There have been games over the past decade to bear the name Leisure Suit Larry, like the abysmal Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, but none of them have been made by the man behind it all, Al Lowe. Come June, however, Lowe and Replay Games are bringing Larry back proper with the PC and Mac release of Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded. That HD remake of the original is just the beginning of Larry’s come back tour, though. 

Digital Trends caught up with Al Lowe during his European vacation to talk about Reloaded and what’s next for the series. Turns out that work on Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded 2 is already underway. (See update at the top. -Ed.)

“We’re busting our butts to get this one out the door,” Lowe told us, “But we’ve begun working on Larry 2 also. I would hope it will be by Christmas, but I suspect it will be 2014.”

Replay Games president Paul Trowe told Digital Trends earlier this spring that there was some contention as to what game to make after work finished on Reloaded. It was down to either an HD remake of Leisure Suit Larry 2, or the long lost sequel Leisure Suit Larry 8. It appears that Lowe got his way with the immediate sequel in the works, but that doesn’t mean the adventure game maker has forgotten about continuing the series. “Our fans deserve to see how Larry’s life plays out!” said Lowe, saying Leisure Suit Larry 8 is “absolutely” still in the works.

By Lowe’s estimation, remaking the old games is essentially like trying to make new ones. When asked what the biggest challenge making Reloaded is, he responds by saying the trick is confounding players again. “[We broke] every walk-thru on the Internet,” says Lowe, “Making it as funny as possible. Recording 8,000+ lines of dialogue. But THE greatest challenge was finding the right development team, one who could put the care and love into the game that we all felt for it. N-Fusion was the perfect fit.”

Larry’s also a different sort of loser than he used to be. “Physically, he’s younger. Since we had a good idea how he’ll look in Larry 7, we backed him off a few years, reduced his belly, gave him some more hair, etc. Gameplay was quite a shift; instead of point-and-click, it’s mostly touch. I think we got it right.”

Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded is out for PC, Mac, and Linux in June as well as iOS and Android later this year.