In 2022, a group of former developers from The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 founded their own studio — Dark Passenger. Recently, it secured seed investment of $3 million.
Concept art from Dark Passenger's game
The funding round was led by the venture capital firm The Games Fund with participation from Blite Fund.
The developers plan to use the money for further work on their debut game and hiring new staff. Dark Passenger plans to increase its team to 30 people in the near future, and to 60 people by the time of the game's release.
Currently, Dark Passenger is working on an original PvPvE stealth action game with a first-person view, set in feudal Japan. The team drew inspiration from martial arts films and classic anime during its development.
It has been reported that players will fully experience being a ninja thanks to a super-dynamic combat system and the ability to perform acrobatic feats, such as running on water, walls, and on thrown spears or arrows.
Representatives from the Dark Passenger team also promise that the upcoming title will not include "predatory practices and unfair mechanics" typical of many game-as-a-service models.
The release date of the game is not yet disclosed. It is known that it will be available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series.
"While interest in multiplayer games is higher than ever, we still see a huge untapped potential. Imagination, trust, and insight are needed to fully understand our direction, and these are exactly the qualities we found in The Games Fund. The investment was a turning point for us. It helped us expand the team and lay the foundation for our project, allowing us to focus on development," commented Jakub Ben, CEO of Dark Passenger, on the deal.
It is worth noting that this is the second investment by The Games Fund in recent weeks. At the beginning of December, the fund invested in the HTML5 games platform Playgama.