Last year, ahead of the launch of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, Konami announced that it was working on a remake of the first Silent Hill game. As I was of the opinion that Konami’s remakes felt somewhat sterile and clinical, I naively asked, what on earth is Konami going to do when it runs out of classic games to remake?
Well, dear reader, the answer is that they’re just going to keep making new games that actually look kinda cool.
Konami Press Start 2026
Konami showed off a couple of games during this week’s State of Play presentation: Rev. Noir, and Rhapsody in Scarlet. We’d already seen Rev. Noir in a previous showcase and I came away feeling kinda lukewarm about it. It’s an action RPG that’s also anime as hell, and kinda reminds me of those Tales games that Bandai Namco loves pushing out. I don’t know if it’s for me personally, but I do appreciate that Konami is at least dipping its toes back into the JRPG genre and trying out new ideas.
Rhapsody in Scarlet is… not really for me either, I don’t think. But this does at least look a bit more interesting. It’s set in 1920s New York, which means plenty of jazz and snazzy tunes, and it’s an action game where its characters fling magic spells at each other in combat. We don’t know all that much about this game just yet, except that it’s an action-adventure game that lets you use magic and beasts in all sorts of battle scenarios.
Those were the two games we saw during State of Play, but Konami saved another cool reveal for its Press Start showcase: Project Zircon. Now this, I’m all in on.
Project Zircon is a deck-building roguelike card game, and let me tell you, those are all the keywords I need to get onboard with whatever new project you’re working on. And it’s from Konami? With a decently sized budget behind it? With a beautiful anime fantasy aesthetic and pretty art, Project Zircon has me intrigued.
Out of all the Japanese-centric games that the company showed off this week, Project Zircon is the one I want to hear more about. I’m not writing off Rev. Noir and Rhapsody in Scarlet just yet; it’s just that I came away from those with lukewarm first impressions, and I’d love to change my stance on those games once I see more of them.
More Silent Hill and Castlevania
Konami’s been making a big push towards reviving its popular IPs as well. We saw what they did with Silent Hill f, which was my Game of the Year for 2025, and the Silent Hill mania will continue this year with the release of Townfall. Personally, I don’t think Townfall is even gonna come close to beating Silent Hill f for me — the whole “Asian girl achieving self-actualization” theme hits too close to home, and there’s just no getting around that — but Silent Hill is my other favorite survival horror franchise (alongside Resident Evil because I am a basic bitch) and I’m genuinely happy to see it make a return.
To its credit, Townfall does look scary as hell. It being a first-person game makes me so reluctant to play it too, which means you just know it’s going to be super creepy.
On the other end of the spectrum, Castlevania is also making a comeback in the form of Belmont’s Curse. I’m actually not as familiar with the Castlevania series, though I’ve certainly enjoyed many of the other games this series has inspired, such as Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and of course, Dead Cells. So you can imagine my excitement when Konami announced that Belmont’s Curse was being made by both Motion Twin and Evil Empire, the Dead Cells teams.
The decision to revive its biggest IPs by working with outside developers that understand its roots is an incredibly underrated one, in my opinion, and I think this is key to The Great Konami Comeback of the 21st Century (TM).
Silent Hill f was created in conjunction with Ryukishi07 and Neobards, with the former being an expert in writing terrifying Japanese puzzle box stories. With Konami wanting to bring the series to Japan, Ryukishi07 was the best possible choice for this project’s narrative lead. Similarly, Annapurna Interactive is known for making games with excellent atmospheric tension. Silent Hill Townfall seems to me like a game that wants to lean into that atmospheric horror aspect of the series, and Annapurna definitely seems like a good fit to bring that vision to life.
The Motion Twin/Evil Empire collaboration is a no-brainer for Castlevania, of course. The Dead Cells team has consistently referenced Castlevania as their main source of inspiration for their game, often calling back to the source material with little easter eggs and even weapons that seem like they came straight out Konami’s IP.
I had my doubts about Konami’s strategy last year, prior to the Snake Eater launch (which I played and loved anyway), but the company has demonstrated, so far at least, that it’s able to identify what fans love about their original IPs, how other developers have managed to iterate on them over the years, and it’s using that to its advantage. By sharpening its beloved IPs and maintaining a steady stream of new projects as well, I think Konami could end up being a very exciting developer to watch over the next few years.
