A year after leaving Evil Within and Hi-Fi Rush devs, Resident Evil legend Shinji Mikami has founded a new studio

Just over a year ago, Shinji Mikami - he of directing the original Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4 fame - was confirmed to be leaving Tango Gameworks, the studio that he had co-founded over a decade earlier to create a modern successor to his survival-horror classics, The Evil Within.

A year on, it seems that Mikami has started up another new studio, as revealed by a somewhat surprising source: the credits for Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered, the polished re-release of his cult shooter collab with No More Heroes creator Suda51.

As spotted by Gematsu, Mikami’s bio on the Hella Remastered site nods toward the developer’s legendary status as the director of Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4, as well as producer of the intervening numbered instalments in the horror series, during his time at Capcom, before going on to head up development of The Evil Within and executive-produce first-person spirit-puncher Ghostwire: Tokyo and delightful rhythm-action surprise Hi-Fi Rush at Tango.

The bio ends up simply stating that Mikami “founded a new company called KAMUY after departing from Tango Gameworks”, giving us the first news about what the influential dev has been up to since last October, when he indicated that his non-compete clause with Tango had come to an end.

“Now that I've broken the spell of non-competition on myself, I guess I should get to work,” Mikami X-ed at the time.

What Mikami and KAMUY might be working on, however, is another question entirely. A Japanese company listing suggests the studio was set up in October last year, so it’s likely to be very early.

The dev’s ludography to date would make a survival-horror game of some kind a solid guess, though his credits also span the lines of Dino Crisis, sci-fi third-person shooter P.N.03, cult fighter God Hand and the incredible PlatinumGames-developed rollerblading shooter Vanquish, so don’t bet on the obvious just yet.