What you need to know
- Founded in 2020, Yellow Brick Games is a Canadian game studio with offices in Quebec and Montreal.
- The team’s new game, Eternal Strands, was originally being published by Private Division, but is now a self-published project.
- Eternal Strands is a third-person action-adventure game where players scale colossal foes.
- Eternal Strands is coming to Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5.
Fans of third-person action-adventure games have another big title to keep an eye on.
Yellow Brick Games, a studio founded in 2020 by veterans from teams at BioWare and Ubisoft, introduced Eternal Strands on Tuesday. Eternal Strands is a game where players scale massive foes, using magical weapons and abilities to overcome insurmountable odds.
While Yellow Brick Games had previously partnered with Take-Two Interactive’s Private Division label to publish this project, the game is now being self-published.
“We are thrilled to share this exciting news with our community,” says chief creative officer Mike Laidlaw in a press release. “Self-publishing is a leap of faith, especially in the current turbulent industry climate, but it’s also an opportunity to take our destiny into our own hands and reach out directly to players and the wider gaming community during this release.”
Eternal Strands is in development for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5, and is slated to launch at some point in 2025.
Yellow Brick Games is a team formed out of cancelled projects
Many would recognize Mike Laidlaw from his work as creative director on the Dragon Age franchise, a role he held until leaving BioWare in 2017. Laidlaw then worked at Ubisoft until 2020, where he and others were reportedly crafting a game based on King Arthur.
The game was canceled in 2020, when former Ubisoft creative officer (who resigned following accusations of sexual misconduct) reportedly said the game needed to be “better than Tolkien.”
Yellow Brick Games’ other founders include a number of former Ubisoft developers, such as Thomas Giroux who previously worked on the Watch Dogs franchise. The studio now employees 68 staff across Quebec and Montreal.
Analysis: This is one to watch
Years ago, I wrote about the cyclical nature of game development, with veteran developers at big studios leaving and forming their own teams. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t, but I’m rooting for Yellow Brick Games, as everything they’ve shown and talked about is right up my alley, and many of these developers have worked on some of my favorite games of all time.
Magic weapons and abilities, giant monstrous foes, environmental effects? That’s ticking a lot of boxes. Obviously if it ends up needing more time it’s understandable, but for now, I’ll be looking forward to playing this next year.
I am curious exactly why the publishing deal with Private Division was dropped. The publishing label isn’t exactly inundated with projects right now, with its main notable game right now being the stellar-looking No Rest for the Wicked from Ori developer Moon Studios.
