Neowiz has announced an intriguing new deal for a game we will be seeing from them in the near future.
As reported by Gematsu, the Korean game publisher has signed a deal to publish the first game from Polish game studio Zakazane, to the tune of $ 8 million. The still unnamed game is described as a “single-player noir western RPG centered around a sheriff in a remote mining town tasked with solving a case that threatens to tear the community apart.”
We realize these may all sound Klingon to you, so we’ll run these down one at a time. Neowiz is one of the old big video game publishers from Korea. While they recently gained some renown as the publishers of Round 8 Studios’ Lies of P, they have an even longer legacy in video games around the world for their rhythm franchise DJMax.
This music game was a fixture of 1990s video game arcades, and made its way to mobile, PSP, and the Vita. Neowiz also very recently revived the franchise with multiplatform release DJMax Respect.
There’s no denying that Lies of P has put Neowiz in an enviable new position, as an up-and-coming publisher that could elevate themselves and other game companies by publishing their games. And so, much like Krafton did when they signed that deal for Hi-Fi Rush and Tango Gameworks, Neowiz wants to give a chance to Zakazane.
It’s certainly a risk, but a calculated one. Zakazane is comprised of several veteran game developers from the best that Poland has to offer. As this VentureBeat profile explains, it was founded in 2022 by Jan Bartkowicz, who was writer and creative director for games like The Witcher 2 and Shadow Warrior.
Other members of Zakazane include the following:
- Piotr Chomiak, an animator who worked on CD Projekt RED, Flying Wild Hog, and 11 bit studios
- Radoslaw Gwarek, technical designer at This War of Mine and Frostpunk
- Adam Kozłowski, art director at The Witcher, Beat Cop, and Shadow Warrior 2
- Marta Adamska, former head of business development at GOG
VentureBeat’s profile goes on to explain that Zakazane’s staff have gone off to make their own smaller studio because they wanted to walk away from big budget AAA development, and focus on the creative side. So they are pitching this upcoming noir Western RPG as a iii (triple i) game. That i stands for indie, a label that maybe shouldn’t be used for a game that has an $ 8 million publishing deal.
We understand that this won’t be a fully 3D open world game that will take 100+ hour to complete. But then, at this scale, developers made games like Disco Elysium and Divinity: Original Sin II.
So this game won’t be gristle for the console wars when it comes out. But it will definitely be something that you will be hearing a lot about. Expectations have now been raised that this could be the next smaller scale blockbuster, or perhaps the next GOTY-bait type video game. We wish Neowiz and Zakazane the best and hope we can learn more about this project in the near future.
