While Game Freak is largely known for its work on the Pokemon franchise, the studio has also worked on smaller-scaled projects, like Pocket Card Jockey. However, Beast of Reincarnation seems to be a much larger-scale non-Pokemon project than we’ve seen the studio handle in the past. Asked about this in an interview with IGN, game director Kito Furushima confirmed that the studio is working with external teams to make the game.
While the internal team at Game Freak that is working on Beast of Reincarnation is “relatively small”, Furushima noted that the overall team is “quite large”. The studio sought out partner companies that would help it in realizing its vision for the upcoming action RPG.
“The team is quite large, as you can imagine, but I will note that it’s not all folks internally here at Game Freak,” he explained. “We managed to seek out a lot of partner companies to work with us, companies, studios that are able to realize the vision of this game in the way that we wanted to make it, so we’re lucky to have a lot of people working on it externally as well.”
Furushima also confirmed that the concept for Beast of Reincarnation came about thanks to an internal program at Game Freak called the Gear Project. As part of this program, studio president Satoshi Tajiri encourages various employees to come up with new IP that could be developed by the studio.
“I wanted to try something completely different and new, unlike other stuff we’ve made,” Furushima explained. “And it just so happened that internally, here at Game Freak, we have a program we call the Gear Project, which is sort of an internal contest run by our president, Satoshi Tajiri, to make original IP within the company. So, I entered my design doc into that contest, and I was able to get permission to start working on a project.”
Game Freak went into quite a bit of detail about Beast of Reincarnation during the recent Xbox Developer_Direct 2026 showcase. Among other things, the combat system, characters and world of the title were at full display. The story takes place in the year 4062 AD, and nature has reclaimed much of what was once built by humans. However, a new plant-like parasitic entity has been ravaging the world. Called the Blight, it has also been mutating creatures and turning them into gigantic beasts, dubbed Malefacts. Protagonist Emma is a Sealer, tasked with taking these Malefacts down. However, a twist in the story is that Emma is accompanied by a seemingly-friendly Malefact – a wolf named Koo. Together, the two must walk the lands of Japan and take down the more dangerous Malefacts.
Game Freak also confirmed that, while Emma will have plenty of options in combat depending on the kinds of skills players unlock, Koo will also be able to unlock new abilities that can further help against tough foes.
In a statement to IGN, Furushima also spoke about how the studio has been focusing on ensuring that the core “gameplay experience” is of the highest quality. This, he noted, included aspects like visual fidelity, frame rate, and even optimizations and bug fixing.
“Our focus is on that gameplay experience. Part of that, of course, is making sure that it performs really well, but our attention is more on getting the experience over to you and making sure that our vision can get to your hands and your hearts,” he said.
Beast of Reincarnation is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S this Summer.
