In recent years there have been many delays in games, but we have also seen another trend that comes from the Covid era of game development: games are announced For real asked to recruit talent. Developers big and small can’t wait to tell us about their upcoming games, sometimes before they have anything but an idea, some concept art and an puzzling codename. Other games are certainly further along, but are still shrouded in mystery. And when there’s a mystery, we always want to know more.
So here’s a rundown of 12 mystery projects: games that we know exist in one form or another, but haven’t been fully revealed yet. None have a title yet, but they could well become one of the biggest games of 2023 and 2024.
Creative Assembly’s ‘new action game’ and mystery project
Work title: None known
Previously covered: August 26, 2022
Creative Assembly has a lot to offer. From the Total War series to Alien: Isolation and the recently announced tactical PvP shooter Hyenas, it seems capable of almost anything. With that in mind, it only seems right to be excited about CA’s two mystery projects. Firstly, a ‘new action game’ is being developed by the Bulgarian wing in the capital Sofia. Jobs for the game include gameplay programmers and technical designers.
Earlier, Creative Assembly posted job openings for an even more mysterious project, with very few details off the lists for a senior gameplay programmer, chief technical designer and project technical director. Key roles, so it’s fair to assume it wasn’t very far in development when the job postings were posted in May.
The next game from Studio ZA/UM
Work title: None known
Previously covered: July 30, 2022
Estonian underdog studio ZA/UM bet the farm on Disco Elysium, and the crazy gamble paid off. Now with funding, ZA/UM has another game in the pipeline. Details are limited, but an early environmental artist job posting listed some juicy facts about the project. The artist he seeks understands urban planning and architecture, loves all things science fiction and space travel, and understands that “there are more things in heaven and on earth than is dreamed of in philosophy.”
Whether this means the next project will branch out entirely into a new setting, or expand the somewhat dreamy alternative Earth of Elysium further, is anyone’s guess. Current vacancies on the ZA/UM site include positions for a lead game designer (a juicy-sounding role), plus Unity-based development roles, including a vacancy for a senior Unity gameplay programmer.
CD Projekt Red’s Next Witcher Game
Work title: None known (but it IS a Witcher game)
Previously covered: Sep 2022
With the TV adaptation in its third season, the card battle spin-offs doing well, and the third main game still attracting massive audiences across multiple platforms, it’s no surprise that CD Projekt Red returns to the world of The Witcher.
We know the game won’t technically be called The Witcher 4, but that’s all we have to do for now. We’re looking at a big new game set in the Witcher universe in production, and CDPRs said it will run on Unreal Engine 5. A single teaser image on the CDPR site also gives us an interesting detail – that’s not Geralt’s wolf medallion, but rather the School Of The Lynx decal. They are a cult of witches previously only seen in fanfiction. A potentially intriguing plot hook, suggesting that Geralt will not be the focus of this new story.
League Of Legends Fighting Game & MMO
Work title: “Project L” and none, respectively
Last covered: August 19, 2022 and April 21, 2022 respectively
Way back in 2016, League of Legends studio Riot wanted to broaden its horizons by buying out several smaller studios, including Radiant Entertainment, developers of the promising indie fighting game Rising Thunder.
Project L is the spin-off of that crew’s League of Legends fighting game. While it’s not a final title yet, everything else about ‘Project L’ seems to be coming together nicely. It was fully revealed in August, with a developer diary video and several gameplay clips. Riot has also confirmed that (as with League) it will be free to play.
While we don’t have any hard-core details on Project L’s combat mechanics, I’d be surprised if it completely left Rising Thunder’s biggest idea behind: that special moves can be performed with a single button and limited by a short cooldown, similar to a MOBA. like (you guessed it) League of Legends. The idea was to make the normally heavy genre more accessible to newcomers, and it’s one I’d love to see again.
Riot’s other much bigger (and more secretive) project is an upcoming MMO set in the League of Legends world of Runeterra. Executive producer Greg Street, who was first quietly teased in 2018, recently confirmed that the project is alive and well and “going well”. Don’t sit around waiting to play this one though, as Street said the first playtests “won’t be any time soon.” Personally, I’m more interested in the fighting game.
Hideo Kojima’s Mystery Project with Xbox Game Studios
Work title: None known
Last covered: June 12, 2022
The name and influence of Metal Gear and Death Stranding director Hideo Kojima is still huge, so when the man announces that he will be co-creating a “never-before-seen concept” with Microsoft, it seems wise to keep an eye out.
Announced at this summer’s Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase, there are almost no concrete details about this project yet. However, Kojima talked about “Microsoft’s advanced cloud technology,” and said the game has been in production for a while. It also seems unlikely that this is the still officially unannounced Death Stranding 2, which we know of because Norman Reedus is just too excited for the project.
Blizzard’s fantasy survival game
Work title: Unannounced Survival Game
Last covered: January 25, 2022
Blizzard is not a studio to be rushed. The last all-new game was Overwatch, released in 2016. The next game seems to be something of a fantasy survival sandbox, based on what looks like an all-new fantasy environment, if the unique bit of teaser concept art is anything to go by. to go.
The associated job listings state that the game will be a big budget triple-A release for both PC and consoles, but very little else. Hiring in January was extensive, however, with a whole crew of mid-to-high level roles up for grabs in art, design and software engineering.
Remedy’s Upcoming Control Multiplayer Spinoff and Project Vanguard
Working titles: Project Condor & Project Vanguard
Last covered: June 29, 2021
Max Payne and Control studio Remedy have plenty of irons in the fire, including a sequel to Alan Wake, a combined remake of Max Payne 1 & 2, and a likely (if not fully confirmed) sequel to Control. It also has two more mysterious projects: a multiplayer-focused Control spin-off, plus a free-to-play shooter codenamed Project Vanguard.
We know the most about Project Condor. There’s a single teaser image, but Remedy feels it “pretends pretty well what Condor is about”. so were probably watching a four-player co-op game about a team of overworked, underpaid agents who hunt for alien threats to grab, tag, and drag the Bureau Of Control home. It’s such a fun setting that I’d love to see what everyday life is like for the grunts without magical powers and shape-shifting super weapons.
We know less about Project Vanguard, other than an intentionally vague project site (which refers to it as an Unreal 4 based “multiplayer live game”), and that it will be released under the banner of Chinese mega label Tencent. It also looks like it was delayed, according to a recent business news report on the studio. This may be partly due to the muted critical reception of Remedy’s solo campaign for CrossfireX for Xbox, another Tencent property.
MachineGames’ take on Indiana Jones
Work title: Unknown, but it’s an Indiana Jones game
Last covered: June 28, 2021
Fresh from cutting its teeth on the rebooted Wolfenstein series, Machinegames looks poised to supply us with another batch of virtual Nazis to shoot, punch and (presumably) whip into submission. Details here are thin, beyond the confirmation of the license.
The new game will be published under the banner of Bethesda (now a subsidiary of Microsoft) and there is a moody teaser trailer with some interesting tidbits on Indy’s desk. Lots for fans to chew on, but nothing concrete, with a few items that feel more like cheeky Easter eggs than hints at the game’s setting. Still, it’s been a while since we’ve had a good Indiana Jones game, and I trust MachineGames will deliver it.
James Bond game from IO Interactive
Work title: Project 007
Last covered: Nov 19, 2020 (opens in new tab)
IO Interactive couldn’t have picked a more fitting sequel to the Hitman trilogy than James Bond, and after years (decades, really) mediocre Bond games, our expectations are running high for this one. It was announced in late 2020 and hasn’t been seen or heard of since, but it probably still has a year or two of development to go, given how detailed IO’s games are.
We already know a bit about it: IO’s official site says that Project 007 will be “an all-original Bond story” and more specifically an origin story. IDE’s job postings reveal that the staff is hiring for numerous roles in Project 007 and another unannounced game. Curious what that could be?
Krafton’s Unannounced Project
Work title: The bird that drinks tears
Last covered: September 20, 2022
Of all the games here, this is the one we have the most information about, which makes the existence of PUBG publisher Krafton’s ‘Unannounced Project’ page feel a bit ironic, especially as it leads with a stark and gory ‘visual concept trailer’. ‘ .’
What we’re probably looking at here is some kind of RPG, action or otherwise, based on the Korean fantasy bestseller The Bird Who Drinks Tears. In the trailer, the novel’s protagonist, Kagan Draca, is on the hunt for Nhaga, a cold-blooded reptile species against whom he has sworn revenge.
The project site also mentions that Kagan fights alongside a Rekkon warrior (sort of, uh, huge anthropomorphic chickens) and a Tokebi wizard (a goblin-like people), easily setting up a party-based RPG. Given that the art on the teaser site shows them traveling together, this seems like the most likely trajectory for the game. A job posting also mentioned an executive producer vacancy for a “story-driven single-player open-world game,” which feels like another obvious piece of the puzzle.
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