Annapurna announces Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth, its first internally-developed game

Annapurna Interactive has announced that the first game to be developed by its own internal studio will set in the world of Blade Runner.

Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth is the first entirely new Blade Runner game in 25 years, and will take place between the original movie and its sequel Blade Runner 2049.

Annapurna says the game will be “set in a dystopian Los Angeles after the Blackout hits”, but hasn’t shared any further information on the game or its release date, other than a teaser trailer shown below.

The game will be directed by Chelsea Hash, who previously worked on Solar Ash, What Remains of Edith Finch and Radiohead’s Kid A Mnesia Exhibition.

Since its inception in 2016, Annapurna Interactive has been known for publishing critically-acclaimed indie titles such as What Remains of Edith Finch, Outer Wirlds, Sayonara Wild Hearts and Stray.

However, in 2020 the company announced that it was setting up its own internal studio, and in 2022 it revealed that Hash was joining the new studio as game director, alongside other members of the Solar Ash development team.

At the time it wasn’t revealed what the new internal studio would be working on, but we now know that it will be Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth.

The last Blade Runner game was a point-and-click adventure released on PC in 1997 by Command & Conquer developer Westwood Studios.

The game was re-released as an Enhanced Edition in 2022 for PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC but players complained that the ‘enhanced’ graphics were actually worse than the original game, leading to it being listed as the 10th worst game of 2022 on Metacritic.