On leaving Tango Gameworks in 2023 industry legend Shinji Mikami started up a new development studio called Unbound. This was the third studio Mikami has co-founded or founded, after PlatinumGames (2007) and Tango itself (2010), not to mention his leadership of Capcom’s iconic Production Studio 4 and later Clover Studios.
Unbound was recently in the news thanks to the appearance of a website with the scantest of details about its first project, and it hasn’t taken long for a major publisher to step in and start throwing money at Mikami. The Korean publisher Shift Up, best-known in the West for Stellar Blade, has announced in a press release that it has acquired Unbound outright through purchasing all of the studio’s shares.
“I find it deeply meaningful to join forces with Unbound, which brings together a world-class development team led by CEO Shinji Mikami,” says Shift Up CEO Hyung-Tae Kim. “This acquisition will serve as an opportunity to deliver the best gaming experience to users worldwide and further solidify Shift Up’s global development competitiveness.”
“I am very pleased to be partnering with Shift Up CEO Hyung-Tae Kim and all the employees,” says Mikami. “I sense strong synergy with CEO Kim, who is also an active creator, and I believe this is an ideal partnership that allows us to focus on creativity. We will do our best to create fun games so that both companies, working as one, can meet our fans’ expectations.”
The announcement comes with a video, which is worth a look for Mikami obsessives because it shows various elements of what Unbound is working on, including an office environment with weird tree-tendrils and various accessories that span the gamut from Egyptian to gothic aesthetics. And spider-like things: lots of those. Yep, sure looks like some sort of horror game.
One caveat: the video says at the end that some AI was used, which is not surprising as it’s mixing what are definitely game assets with real-world footage. There are some comments about this making the game “AI slop” but I’m reserving judgment until we see the product itself: just because AI is being used in a promotional video doesn’t mean it has played a major role in the creation of the game. That’s certainly something I wouldn’t want to see in a Mikami-led project.
“I think you can expect a lot from us soon,” says Mikami, before a bunch of employees talk about how great he is, and the open atmosphere of the studio. Rather winningly, Mikami then returns to say “well of course it’s reassuring when the person at the top is an idiot.”
Mikami spiels a little about why he believes in openness fostering creativity, “even if I get joked with a lot”, while some sort of humanoid-demon thing with wings struts about behind him. He also emphasises one of the core themes of his own career: nurturing and working with young talent, from mentoring Hideki Kamiya at Capcom to bringing through John Johanas and Kenji Kimura at Tango.
“We’re going to create a masterpiece of a game,” Mikami says confidently. From the creator of Resident Evil, the director of Resi 4, and the brain behind the likes of Vanquish and the Evil Within, those are some big words, and the only appropriate response is hell yeah Shinji, sock it to me!
Unbound currently has around 50 staff but has been on a big hiring spree for its current project, which may be closer to release than I thought given this video.
“I’ve come to see my vision and ideals more clearly,” says Mikami. “And I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation where, as a creator, our wavelengths and direction align this closely. So for as long as my career continues, I would like to keep working together. And for the first time in a while, I’ll be fully involved on-site working on a fairly large game. And I’m really looking forward to this.”
As Mikami says this, we get a shot of Kim and Mikami looking out over a skyline filled with an ominous number of birds, before a shot of a giant floating thing made out of around a dozen wings hovering over a blasted cityscape. “To all the gamers waiting for this, I hope you can wait just a little longer for its release,” Mikami says at the end. “That’s how I feel.”
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