‘Journey’ and ‘Flower’ Indie Gaming Studio Up to Something New

A new game from the studio that gave us Flow, Flower and Journey, three of the finest examples of games, indie or no, this side of Pong?

That’s what it looks like. In a blog post titled “Something new from TGC,” the studio’s dropped a picture of a lit candle leaning toward an unlit one. That’s captioned as “a game about giving.” Cue gameplay speculation about memetic transfer, altruistic devotion, creation versus destruction versus transformation, and so on.

Thatgamecompany hasn’t posted a blog update to its official site since May — a reflection on the company’s formation from founder Jenova Chen to mark the studio’s 10-year anniversary. The studio’s last game, Journey, was released in 2012, and updated to support PlayStation 4 last year. Where Flow, Flower and Journey were Sony exclusives, the presumption is that whatever the company’s been working on since won’t be platform-exclusive.

I asked the studio if it could say any more about this new project, and was told, simply, “more to follow.” In an older FAQ, responding to the question “What is thatgamecompany working on next?” the studio answers “Our next game is a very ambitious project to positively touch more players than ever before. We’re exploring new technology and building on everything we’ve learned from our previous games in order to give the world the most beautiful and inspiring experience we can create.” The studio also says to expect the new game on “more platforms than we have developed for in the past,” and that it’ll be self-published.

Update: Some of that “more to follow” includes two additional shots, one of a Flower-ish field with a stone gate and a pair of star-like lights, the other of four caped, silhouetted children holding hands. You can see all the images as a triptych here, and the company both notes it’s hiring, and by way of the year stamped on the image of the children, implies that the game is coming in 2017.