Game Freak’s next big project has finally been officially revealed.
Game Freak was founded by Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori as a video game fanzine in 1983, before they shifted to becoming a developer themselves. They are most famous for the Pokémon games, which had become so successful out the gate that they launched a joint venture with another developer, Creatures Inc, and publisher Nintendo, called The Pokémon Company.
However, Game Freak is very much still an independent company, and their business relationship didn’t actually lead to them becoming fully owned by Nintendo. And so, they had the leeway to launch the Gear Project Initiative in 2019. This was simply a new project to allow them to make new original games to keep learning aspects of game development. Under this initiative, they made several smaller games including Giga Wrecker, HarmoKnight, Pocket Card Jockey, and Tembo the Badass Elephant.
And then, in 2023, Game Freak announced that they were making a new game with Take-Two Interactive, under their Private Division label. That game was codenamed Project Bloom, but aside from a single preview image, we didn’t hear about this project for months.
In fact, this had become a bit of an issue, after Take-Two Interactive confirmed that they had closed their label Private Division last year. While Take-Two allowed some projects to spinoff to other owners, the fate of Project Bloom remained unknown for the past six months.
Finally, Game Freak reemerged in the Xbox Game Showcase to unveil Project Bloom, and announce its real name, Beast of Reincarnation. As shared by Gematsu, the game comes with this description:
In post-apocalyptic Japan, a land ruined by corruption and crawling with monstrous beasts, humanity’s last hope may rest with Emma—an outcast cursed as a Blighted One—and Koo, her loyal canine companion.
Survive a journey across an ominous, ever-changing world where dangerous forests can erupt in the wasteland. As Emma and Koo push deeper into the unknown, their bond strengthens—and with it, strange powers bloom.
Explore what it means to be human in Beast of Reincarnation, an expansive one-person, one-dog action RPG built around demanding, technical combat.
What awaits at journey’s end?
To everyone’s surprise, it’s also emerged that Beast of Reincarnation is far bigger in scale than their previous Gear Project titles. In fact, it very well could cost half as much as new mainline Pokémon game, if not more.
Beast of Reincarnation is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on Steam in 2026. Interestingly, not only has it not been confirmed for a Nintendo platform, it’s also received a Game Pass Day One deal.
There’s still a few mysteries surrounding this game, and we don’t mean the in-game lore. The game’s new publisher is listed as a new unknown company called Fictions, and it isn’t clear where this comes from. Is Fictions owned by Take-Two Interactive, or Microsoft? Did Game Freak just find a completely unknown publisher, who managed to snag this Game Pass deal? Is Fictions actually owned by the Saudi PIF, or some Chinese conglomerate like TenCent or NetEase? Or, is Fictions an entirely new publisher founded by Game Freak employees, or perhaps former employees and friends?
Whatever the case, it is great to learn that not only was this game not cancelled in the middle of Take-Two’s closure of Private Division, it’s actually come forward and is coming soon. Whatever Fictions is, it’s their decision to bring Beast of Reincarnation to the Switch or Switch 2, or not. Everyone is certainly looking forward to learning more about this game in the near future.
In the meantime, you can watch the official trailer for Beast of Reincarnation below.
