Game Freak is working on an action-adventure game that isn’t Pokémon

There won't be any Pikachu or Charizard in this game

Game Freak, the famed developer behind (almost) all Pokémon main series games, has announced a new non-Pokémon project — an action-adventure game using a brand new IP. Perhaps surprisingly for some, the game will be published by Private Division, a subsidiary of Take-Two that focuses on independent games.

Game Freak’s new game doesn’t have a name yet, or a firm release date. Most of what we know right now is that it’s codenamed Project Bloom, and it’ll be out sometime in or after Take-Two’s 2026 fiscal year. That’s a long time to wait, so we imagine it’s probably quite early in development.

This isn’t the first non-Pokémon game to come out of Game Freak, not by a long shot. Prior to Pokémon taking off, the developer worked on a number of games across multiple platforms, including Pulseman on the Sega Genesis.

Since then, the company has usually put out a game unrelated to Pokémon every few years, though they seem to be getting more frequent following a new program within Game Freak. Gear Project was a program started to help developers take a break from Pokémon, and allows staff to pitch projects and take a small group of staff to see them through.

Gear Project has resulted in games like Tembo the Badass Elephant, which was published by Sega, the Rising Star Games-published Giga Wrecker, and 2019’s Little Town Hero. Not all of these games were received particularly well, but any chance to have a break and flex your creative muscles is probably a good thing when you work on the world’s largest media franchise.

Notably, most of these games end up on platforms other than Nintendo’s, with Tembo in particular only on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. Other games, like Little Town Hero, started on Switch but eventually came to other platforms too.

It’s not known if Project Bloom is part of Gear Project, or what platforms it’ll launch on, but it’s probably safe to assume it won’t be a Nintendo-only affair. Private Division seems to focus on launching games on just about every platform under the sun, and Bloom will likely be no different.

Kota Furushima, a director at Game Freak, said that Private Division was the obvious choice for Bloom.

“We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to create new IP that is bold and tonally different from our prior work,” Furushima said in a statement, “From the beginning, Private Division was the publisher we wanted to work with on our new game. Their track record and global expertise give us all the confidence to create a sweeping new action-adventure that we can’t wait to share more about in the future.”

The only other thing we have to go off is the project’s key concept art, which you’ll see at the top of this page. It looks pretty dark and spooky, but only time will tell what kind of game Project Bloom ends up being. Hopefully it’s one that’s a little more stable than Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.