The Last Guardian and Shadow of the Colossus developer GenDesign appears to be teasing art of its next game.
Over the holiday period, GenDesign released a 2021 greetings card (opens in new tab), displaying art from Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian, and a mysterious fourth game. A very small vertical slice of the enigmatic project can be seen on the far right of the greetings card, and appears to depict a character standing beside a large object (a common theme in games from GenDesign leadership).
This isn’t the first time GenDesign has teased their mysterious upcoming game. Studio head Fumito Ueda first alluded to a new game back in 2018 (opens in new tab), and later on that same year, the developer told Famitsu (opens in new tab) that the new project would be “something on the scale of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian.” Additionally, the game will be a brand new creation, and not a sequel or a prequel.
Founded in 2014 by former members of Team Ico, GenDesign went on to ship The Last Guardian in 2016 as a PlayStation exclusive. There won’t be any such exclusivity with this next game from GenDesign, as Epic Games announced in March 2020 that it would be publishing upcoming games from independent studios, including GenDesign, Remedy Entertainment, and Playdead.
If you want to see what we made of GenDesign’s 2016 game when it released, you can read our complete The Last Guardian review for more (spoilers: it’s very good). In fact, we adored The Last Guardian so much that we put it at number 57 in our ultimate Games of the Generation feature, which highlights the greatest releases over the PS4/Xbox One era. Whatever GenDesign’s next project ends up being, I’m incredibly excited about it already.
For a complete look at all the games set to launch over the course of the next 12 months, you can head over to our new games 2021 guide for more.