Cygames revives Project Awakening after years of silence and moves development to Unreal Engine 5

Cygames has confirmed that Project Awakening is still in development nearly a decade after its original reveal. The action RPG was first announced in 2016, when Cygames was still known mainly as a mobile focused company trying to move into console development. The project then went quiet for years, leading many players to assume it had either stalled or been quietly canceled.

That is no longer the case. In a new interview, Cygames developer Tomino Kimihiro said production is now ready to accelerate. The team includes developers who have been involved since the beginning, along with staff who joined after completing work on Granblue Fantasy: Relink. Cygames is also treating the game as a major internal project, with its Tokyo and Osaka teams working together.

The most important technical change is the move away from Cygames’ own Cyllista engine. Project Awakening is now being developed on Unreal Engine 5, with the studio aiming for a more hyper realistic visual style. That marks a clear shift from the older version of the project and suggests Cygames is rebuilding or heavily reworking the game around more modern tools.

Project Awakening is moving toward slower and more tactical action combat

Cygames also shared new details about combat, which appears to be taking a different direction from Granblue Fantasy: Relink. Some developers who worked on Relink’s action systems are contributing to Project Awakening, so the studio wants to keep strong control response. However, the pace will be slower because the game is built around a more realistic human world.

The goal is to make combat feel heavier and more deliberate. Instead of fast arcade like action, players will be encouraged to watch enemy attacks, then decide whether to dodge, block, or counter. Cygames wants animation and movement to carry more weight, while still keeping inputs responsive.

Cygames is also trying to make combat feel more natural through animation variety. For example, repeated combo inputs may not always produce identical movement if the terrain changes. Enemies are also being designed with more lifelike behavior. If knocked down, they may not simply fall into a fixed animation. They may continue trying to attack from the ground, giving monsters a stronger sense of survival and physical presence.

That direction fits the game’s visual ambition. A photorealistic action RPG would likely feel strange if it moved with the same speed and exaggeration as Relink. By slowing combat down and adding more context sensitive motion, Cygames appears to be building Project Awakening around readable decision making rather than constant speed.

The revival also shows how much Cygames has changed since the game was first announced. When Project Awakening was revealed, it was meant to be the studio’s first major console push. Since then, Cygames has released Granblue Fantasy: Versus and Granblue Fantasy: Relink, proving it can ship larger scale console games. That experience now seems to be feeding back into Project Awakening.

There is still no release window, and the long development history means expectations should remain cautious. A switch to Unreal Engine 5 could help production, but it may also mean parts of the project have changed substantially from the 2016 vision. Still, the new comments make it clear that Project Awakening is not dead.

After years of silence, Cygames is finally talking about the game again, and the project now has a clearer identity: a realistic fantasy action RPG with heavier combat, more reactive animation, and a broader development effort behind it.