Former Gears of War and Unreal creator Cliff Bleszinski has already revealed that he’s coming out of retirement to announce his new project on July 8th. The man himself has now revealed a countdown timer for the game’s reveal, which is roughly 4 days, 6 hours and some odd minutes away.

Over on Twitter, Bleszinski’s thoughts on the matter were rather straightforward: “I have a countdown clock. Shit just got real.”

Concept art for the game has been doing the rounds in the past few months, with rumours stating that this next project would be called Silverstreak. Bleszinski has also expressed his interest in public funding through avenues like Kickstarter but it’s unknown whether his new project will go that route. As for the development team creating this new game, we only know about Boss Key Productions, a company which Bleszinski had incorporated recently.

What are your thoughts? Looking forward to Dude Huge’s newest game? Let us know below.

Gears of War creator and overall industry veteran Cliff Bleszinski is currently preparing for his next project, rumoured to be called Silverstreak, and while speaking to Gamasutra, he reflected on the development of Gears of War.

“As far as [Gears], at the end of the day, you’re shooting fucking lizard-men in the fucking face with a fucking chainsaw gun. It didn’t wind up what I’d hoped; I’d pitched it as ‘Band of Brothers with monsters’ — you know Band of Brothers is well-done and emotional, telling the story of the Greatest Generation and what they did in the war.

“Yet somehow we landed on ‘Predator’… the characters being all ‘buff and manly’, I’d never planned on that. You can’t plan for that. With game development, it’s like doing a Ouija board. With [dialog barks] it gets easy to slip into Schwarzenegger territory.”

Despite the massive success of the series, Bleszinski doesn’t “want Gears to be my defining legacy. At the end of the day, it’s known for being a fun, fantastic franchise. But I’d like to think there’s more to my creativity than that.”

As for his upcoming game, Bleszinski has declined to offer any concrete details. However, it won’t be coming out on your usual retail discs. “The whole ‘old guard,’ where you get a Game Informer cover and an E3 reveal, is dead. I’ll never make another disc-based game for the rest of my career, and [at E3] they’re trying to woo buyers from Target and Walmart?”

Thoughts?

Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski has been rather vocal since leaving Epic Games, whether it was about the Xbox One supporting DRM or concerning his newest project rumoured to be called “Silverstreak”.

Now, speaking to GamerHub, Bleszinski has revealed that his next project could be unveiled in March. “Right now I’m looking at procuring funding for that; expect some news hopefully in the next 4-6 weeks.”

While he’ll be procuring funds from investors or a venture capital firm, there is also an interest in going the Kickstarter route. “I would like to go directly to the consumer if possible, although with the safety net of providing outside financing. I think Kickstarter is a beautiful, romantic thing. I think that for every success story there’s ten failures, sadly, on Kickstarter.”

The actual success rate is more like 3.5 projects out of 10, by the way.

Cliffy B also spoke about Steam Early Access and the success its brought developers like Bohemia Interactive for DayZ. “But I think it’s possible with the success of DayZ, to have the concept of pay-for-alpha or pay-for-early-access, and help the community forge and shape your game. Build the company while you build the game while you build the community, at the same time.”

As promised here is another closely cropped image from something I'm working on. http://t.co/JQWXs1bfG1

— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) September 1, 2013

Cliffy has been on a sabbatical from the gaming industry since leaving Epic Games, but has talked about working on a new IP called Silverstreak. Bleszinski is currently in the middle of putting a team together for development.

Thus far we’ve seen a ton of varied concept art for this new IP – which may or may not be Silverstreak – including giants playing a sport with jet-packs and of a city in the midst of a storm. Stay tuned for more details about Silverstreak, including just what the hell it’s even about.

Recently however, Bleszinski released some new concept art, simply stating that it’s “something I’m working on”. Check it out below. Could this be for Silverstreak?

And yes, those are giants with jetpacks playing…something. Cliffy B recently told Polygon that both images are from a new IP, and have been cropped to act as some kind of sneak peek at the new universe being created. It has been revealed that both pieces were created by concept artist Shaddy Safadi, who also worked on The Last of Us.

What exactly Silverstreak is and when we’ll be getting more details about it is another story altogether. Stay tuned for more updates.