A darker, more mature Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is in development

A new game based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is in development, but this one promises to be darker and more mature.

The game will be based on The Last Ronin, a five-issue comic mini-series released in 2020 which is set in the future and sees three of the Turtles already dead.

In an interview with Polygon, Paramount Global’s senior vice presidnt for games Doug Rosen said the game would be a third-person action RPG and cited the recent God of War games as a comparison.

Given the nature of the story, the game will mainly be a single-player adventure, as opposed to the multiplayer-friendly nature of most other TMNT games.

The Last Ronin was written by original TMNT creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and is set in New York in a dark future.

The city is ruled by The Shredder’s grandson, and only one of the four Turtles remains, his brothers already dead.

While we won’t spoil the identity of the last Turtle for those who haven’t read the book yet, he uses all four of the Turtles’ weapons – Leonardo’s katana swords, Donatello’s bo staff, Raphael’s sai and Michelangeo’s nunchaku.

Throughout the graphic novel, the Turtle occasionally has hallucinations and flashbacks in which he believes his brothers are alive, and Rosen has suggested that this means the game could make other Turtles playable in flashback sequences.

Further reading

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Review: TMNT The Cowabunga Collection sums up the era in a half-shell

Digital Eclipse's latest retro compilation celebrates Konami's Turtles games in style

Two critically acclaimed TMNT games were released last year, though they both focused on colourful, retro-style beat ’em up gameplay.

TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection is a retro compilation containing 13 TMNT games from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, while TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge is a modern take on those games, offering beat ’em up gameplay for up to six players.