Video game artist and director Ikumi Nakamura most recently worked as creative director on Ghostwire: Tokyo at Bethesda’s Tango Gameworks, and now she’s officially branching out into uncharted territory. In an exclusive interview with IGN, Nakamura—whose previous credits include everything from Okami to The Evil Within—revealed her new game studio, UNSEEN, and its growing roster of international talent.

Nakamura first announced plans to open her own studio back in March of last year, highlighting her journey in a short documentary from GameSpark and Archipel. At the time she revealed that she left Tango Gameworks after nine years as a creative director due to health troubles, and wondered if there could be a way for her to make games while feeling better. Nakamura took the time to understand what makes a good working environment, and has applied those philosophies to the creation of UNSEEN. 

While it will likely be some time before we see what the team at UNSEEN is cooking up, Nakamura plans to focus on some of her key interests, which include mystery, horror, science-fiction and stories with supernatural elements. She added that she wants to make a game with “characters that reflect real-life personalities and minorities, with an open-minded setting that represents multiple cultures,” and is also looking at other mediums beyond games for these concepts. 

UNSEEN’s YouTube channel is live with an introduction video:

And IGN shared its exclusive interview:

Other industry veterans who have joined UNSEEN so far include Naoki Katakai (previously Tango Gameworks) as CDO and Environment Art Specialist, Liam Wong (Ubisoft) as Visual Director, Raúl Ibarra (Moon Studios) as Animation Director, Misuzu Watanabe (Capcom) as Game Director and NASS as Concept Artist and Illustrator.

Sources: IGN, Gematsu

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Joseph Luster is the Games and Web editor at Otaku USA Magazine. You can read his comics at subhumanzoids. Follow him on Twitter @Moldilox.