You could be forgiven for thinking HoYoverse is pretty busy right now. That’s because it is!
In addition to its established titles like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, it’s also recently announced Animal Crossing-like Petit Planet and auto-chess battler Honkai Nexus Anima.
But that’s not stopped it from revealing its next big thing: a Control-like open world game running on Unreal Engine 5 named Varsapura.
In this 30-minute gameplay trailer, we’re introduced to a bit of everything: a shadowy bureau organisation named SEAL, mind-bending environments that span both the real-world and a shadow realm, high-octane combat that relies on Zenless Zone Zero-style character switching, and even stealth action.
The art style is quite interesting, as it maintains the distinctive anime look of the studio’s other titles but blends it with more realist environments, which is something we haven’t seen from the company before.
But as with its other projects, each character has a unique fighting style, whether it’s attacking with discarded sheets of paper or a parasol. Expect the final game to be a gacha where you pull for different units.
Of course, our guess is it may be a while before we get an update on that, as there’s no release date attached to this project, and it feels like HoYoverse has revealed it primarily to drive recruitment at its Shanghai and Singapore offices.
Still, with over 30 minutes of gameplay, it feels like the creative direction for this project is already pretty much determined. We’re looking forward to learning more over the coming years.
As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.