The recent GeForce Now database leak contained lots of interesting titles (some of which were just “speculative” claims NVIDIA), with some of the most intriguing being a series of Xbox codenames, such as Project Typhoon, Project Holland, Project Woodstock, Project Indus, and Project Cobalt. Some of these codenames refer to games that have already been announced – Typhoon is Avalanche’s Contraband, Holland is Fable, and Woodstock is Forza Horizon 5, but reliable Windows Central insider Jez Corden has stepped in to provide some more details about Indus and Cobalt.
Per Corden, Project Indus is 4X strategy game in development at Oxide Games, who previously worked on Ashes of Singularity. Apparently, this is going to be a fairly straight-ahead Civilization challenger, with turn-based strategy, city building, warfare, diplomacy ect. Corden speculates the game may be designed specifically with cloud play in mind, given it’s turn-based approach would work well on mobile devices.
Meanwhile, Project Cobalt is said to be InXile Entertainment’s next project, which sounds like it will have some Dishonored-like flair, as it will reportedly be set in a dark Steampunk world. Perhaps most interesting, the game will apparently shed the isometric view InXile is known for in favor of a first-person perspective.
Corden also briefly teases a number of other projects, including new Minecraft spinoffs from Mojang, more Age of Empires games, and something unannounced from Obsidian. Of course, take this all with a grain of salt for now, but if these rumors turn out to be the real deal, Microsoft is definitely looking to cover a wide gamut of genres and styles with their upcoming games.
What do you think? Any of these rumored Xbox projects sound interesting? I’m always up for more Civ-style fun, particularly after Humankind didn’t quite end up being the Civ killer it could’ve been.
