New game from Sonic Mania team, former developer of Dragon Age revealed by Private Division

Take-Two Interactive’s indie-focused publisher Private Division announced new deals with four studios, Die Gute Fabrik, Evening Star, Piccolo Studio and Yellow Brick Games, on Wednesday. Announcements mean new games from the teams behind Sega Sonic Mania and AAA franchises like Dragon Age, Assassin’s Creed, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six will be coming from Private Division over the next few years.

The first installment of those games, which have yet to be announced, is expected to arrive after April 1, 2023, the start of Take-Two’s 2024 fiscal year.

Die Gute Fabrik is known for its local multiplayer games Sports friends and Johann Sebastian Joustand for IGF 2019 and Indiecade Award winner Mutazione, the mutant soap opera that we call one of the best written games of the year. Hannah Nicklin, studio head and creative director at Die Gute Fabrik, described the studio’s next game as a story-driven adventure.

Evening Star was founded in 2018 by the developers behind Sonic Mania and Sonic Mania Plus – Christian Whitehead, Dave Padilla, Tom Fry, Hunter Bridges and Brad Flick – and will see the team expand their horizons in a new 3D action platformer. Evening Star is building its unannounced game in the studio’s proprietary Star Engine.

Piccolo Studio is the developer of Arise: A Simple Story, a 3D narrative adventure with engaging time manipulation puzzles. The studio is developing a “unique new IP,” Private Division said in a press release.

Yellow Brick Games, founded in 2020 by former Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw, starring Ubisoft veteran Thomas Giroux (Crew), Jeff Skalski and Frederic St.-Laurent B. (both Assassin’s Creed Syndicate), is developing “an ambitious new action RPG” for Private Division. Laidlaw said in a press release that his studio’s partnership with the studio allows the studio to take “risks that may not have occurred in the development of AAA games.”

The private board was founded in 2017 and has since published Panache Digital Games’ Ancestors: The Humankind OdysseyObsidian Entertainment’s The outside worldV1 Interactive’s (now closed) Defrosterand OlliOlli’s World. In 2020, Private Division announced game publishing deals with Moon Studios, League of Geeks and Roll7 – the latter of which was acquired by Private Division in November.