Cliff Bleszinski returning to games industry

Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski is returning to the video game industry to work on a new project.

‘I’m officially coming out of retirement to make video games again,’ said Bleszinski on Twitter. He also went on to promise more information within the next seven days.

At the end of last year, Bleszinski had expressed a desire to return to the industry and had a PC-focused arena-based FPS in mind, but it is unclear whether this will be the project that he is working on now.

He has also previously stated that he would want to start up his own studio and has no intention of returning to Epic Games.

The veteran developer left Epic Games in October 2012 and has not worked on any video game projects since then. His motivation for leaving the industry appears to have been to get a ‘much needed break’ with the developer stating that he’d been working on games since he was a teenager and had been doing it non-stop.

As well as the Gears of War series, Bleszinski was also involved in creating the Unreal series, in particular the original Unreal Tournament. Prior to this, he created the Jazz jackrabbit series, one of the first side-scrolling platformers made specifically for the PC.

The first game Bleszinski released was a point and click adventure, The Palace of Deceit: Dragon’s Plight, which he launched when he was 17 through his own company. The game ultimately got him his job at Epic Games.