Ex-CD Projekt developers who worked on The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 have formed a new studio and are working on an online game with Unreal Engine 5 – and it sounds like a lot like Destiny 2 or Warframe as a ninja game in feudal Japan.
The new studio, Dark Passenger, was co-founded by Jakub Ben and Marcin Michalski – who previously worked on The Witcher 3 and its expansions on the game’s art team, lending assistance on the cinematic side of Cyberpunk 2077. Their new indie studio is made up of “game dev veterans and fresh blood specialists” and is currently in production on a new online game set in Japan.
Dark Passenger describes the game as a first-person stealth-focused online multiplayer game with co-op, PvP, and PvE elements – a lot like Destiny 2 – built in Unreal Engine 5. “Our goal,” the developer states, “is to create highly exciting online experiences that are focused both on cooperation and rivalry.” Players take control of a ninja assassin and join up with other players to take on other clans and search for mysterious objects of “extraordinary power.”
The game will feature “Engaging close-ranged combat” with weapons such as “katanas, short tanto and wakizashi blades, kusarigama chains, shurikens, kunai throwing knives” and more. While Dark Passenger describes the need to remain unseen it also suggests parkour will be a focus. While the first-person combat suggests Shadow Warrior, there definitely sounds like somewhat of a co-op Assassin’s Creed vibe too.
Regardless, the game sounds a long way off – it doesn’t even have a title yet – but Dark Passenger is certainly a studio to keep an eye on.
Elsewhere in the world of ex-Witcher developers making an intriguing original game, the creator of Seven: The Days Long Gone is making a “morally ambiguous” RPG. As for the world of The Witcher itself, The Witcher 4 is on the way – but as for which one of these games will hit first, we have no clue.