Overview
Gear Project is Game Freak's internal initiative that gives employees the opportunity to pitch and develop original game concepts outside the Pokemon franchise. The program has been running since the early 2010s, with its first title, HarmoKnight, releasing in 2012. It has produced several smaller titles before leading to Beast of Reincarnation, which is by far the most ambitious project to come out of the initiative.
Purpose
Game Freak is best known as the developer of the mainline Pokemon series, a franchise that dominates the studio's output and public identity. Gear Project exists as a counterbalance. The program operates through an internal pitch system: any team member can propose an idea to leadership as long as two other colleagues support it. In principle, there are no limits on participation. If enough people agree, those supporters form a team to build a prototype. Game Freak maintains two production teams, with Team 1 dedicated to Gear Project and Team 2 handling Pokemon.
In 2019, Game Freak director Masayuki Onoue stated that the company was increasingly prioritizing original game creation to grow staff experience, noting that creators can return to Pokemon "refreshed" with what they learn on original projects. Co-founder Junichi Masuda has described the system: "Game Freak members can submit as many ideas as they want for the planning stage, and we don't judge them. It's after the testing phase when we've actually made those ideas playable that we determine if it's good or not." The initiative prioritizes "creating something interesting" over profit considerations.
However, scaling Gear Project alongside the increasingly ambitious Pokemon franchise has created staffing challenges. Game Freak has acknowledged that "the development scale of Pokemon Legends: Arceus and other Pokemon series games has grown, so having enough staff for Gear Projects has become an issue," but the studio has said it has "no intention of stopping work on making new games."
Previous titles
Several games have come out of the Gear Project initiative over the years:
Title | Description |
|---|---|
HarmoKnight | (2012, 3DS): A rhythm-based action platformer where players hit notes in time with music to defeat enemies. The first Gear Project release, demonstrating that Game Freak could work outside the RPG genre entirely. |
Pocket Card Jockey | (2013 Japan / 2016 worldwide, 3DS): A horse racing game blended with solitaire card mechanics that became a cult favorite. Later ported to Apple Arcade and Switch as Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On! |
Tembo the Badass Elephant | (2015, PS4/Xbox One/PC): A side-scrolling action game about a military elephant on a rampage. Developed in partnership with Sega, it was notably the first Game Freak title to appear on non-Nintendo platforms. |
Giga Wrecker | (2017, PC; Alt. version 2019, Switch): A physics-based puzzle-action game where players manipulate debris to solve environmental puzzles and fight enemies. Released on PC first, later ported to Switch as Giga Wrecker Alt. |
Little Town Hero | (2019, Switch): Originally codenamed "Town," this turn-based RPG set in a small village featured a card-based battle system. It received a mixed reception but showed Game Freak's continued interest in experimenting with combat system design. |
Beast of Reincarnation
Beast of Reincarnation originated as a Gear Project pitch from Kota Furushima, codenamed Project Bloom. Furushima, who had spent his career working on Pokemon battle systems, UI, and sound, pitched a concept for a single-player action RPG set in a post-apocalyptic Japan where a woman and her dog companion fight through corrupted landscapes using a hybrid real-time and command-based combat system.
The pitch was approved around 2020, and development began using Unreal Engine 5. The project was publicly announced on May 9, 2023, initially partnered with Take-Two Interactive's Private Division for publishing. That arrangement later transferred to Fictions when Private Division was divested. The game releases August 4, 2026, making it the most commercially significant product of the Gear Project initiative.
Significance
Beast of Reincarnation represents a qualitative leap for Gear Project. Previous titles were modest in scope: digital-only releases, smaller teams, limited budgets. Beast of Reincarnation is a full triple-A production releasing simultaneously on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, with day-one Xbox Game Pass support. The gap between HarmoKnight on the 3DS and a multiplatform UE5 action RPG shows how the initiative has grown from a creative outlet into a pipeline capable of producing studio-defining work.
The success or failure of Beast of Reincarnation will likely determine the future scope and ambition of Gear Project. A strong showing could encourage Game Freak to dedicate more resources to non-Pokemon development, while a disappointing result might reduce the initiative back to the smaller-scale experiments that characterized its earlier years.