Deadly Premonition director Swery making a new game called The Missing for 2018

It's going to be a big year for Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro, the director behind cult favorite Deadly Premonition. After a failed Fig crowdfunding campaign last fall, his RPG about a strange English town and cats is headed to Kickstarter in March to try again. And now there's another project: Swery is directing The Missing, to be developed by his studio White Owls and published by Arc System Works.

In the announcement video for The Missing above, Swery says "Arc System Works has given me an opportunity to create something entirely new," and  cheekily adds "frankly, this title will blow your mind. I think it's sick." 

What do we know, other than Swery's pretty into the game he's making? Just about nothing. There's no gameplay in the announcement video, just some footage of people walking, an owl, and some nice landscapes. Swery's voiceover at least hints at the tone and what the title of the game signifies:

"A missing person, someone who's lost, or even something lost. Maybe it's your loved one… or a place you belong. Do you ever feel lost in your everyday life? The Missing is for someone like you."

Arc System Works is primarily known as the developer of fighting games like Guilty Gear, BlazBlue and the recent Dragon Ball FighterZ, but it has also published several games like the Under Night In-Birth series, and has just established a North American branch in Los Angeles.

With The Missing supposedly due in 2018, it shouldn't be too long before we hear more.

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).