Keiji Inafune’s Comcept game studio has been officially purchased by Level-5, the developer behind titles such as Ni No Kuni, Professor Layton and White Knight Chronicles. The purchase was confirmed by Famitsu yesterday. Comcept will be folded into Level-5 and will be re-branded as Level-5 Comcept, making it a subsidiary of the company. Level-5 Comcept is located in Osaka, Japan and currently holds a mere 15 employees; however, Level-5 is looking to recruit more people to beef up the studio’s staff.
Keiji Inafune stated that Comcept itself is closed for good, but he remains committed to working on and finishing the titles his studio had in development, meaning that we may see the completion of Red Ash, a game that looks to be modeled after Mega Man Legends, although Red Ash nor any other title were mentioned specifically.
This isn’t the first time Comcept and Level-5 worked together as they collaborated on an anthology of experimental games known as Guild 02 which included Inafune’s arcade shooter Bugs vs Tanks. The first official title from Level-5 Comcept was announced to be Dragon Colonies, an RTS game of iOS and Android. Dragon Colonies is due in Japan sometime in 2018, but a specific release date had not been announced as of yet.
Previously, Comcept is infamously known for Mighty No. 9, a game that was met with heavy criticism for being delayed multiple times. The final product felt unpolished and even some of the Kickstart backer rewards have yet to be honored. Inafune also released ReCore for the Xbox One game system last year.
