The June 2025 State Of Play showcase had one really odd game with so much blood and zany stuff going on it has had to be a Grasshopper Manufacture joint. And it is.
Grasshopper Manufacture announced their latest game, Romeo Is A Dead Man. This is the developer’s first new IP in ten years, the last being Let It Die.
Romeo Is A Dead Man stars titular guy Romeo Stargazer (yes that’s his name) who’s about five seconds from being dead, only for his grandpa giving him the ability to become Dead Man, “a dude stuck between life and death who ends up hunting space-time’s most wanted fugitives through multiple universes.”
There’s guns, there’s swords, blood is spewing like it’s confetti throughout the whole trailer in this beautiful mess of a trailer only the minds of Goichi Suda (Suda51) and the team at Grasshopper can concoct.
And of course Romeo has a girlfriend name Juliet who is missing, which Romeo/Dead Man is searching for, all while taking out these space-time outlaws.
The press release for the announcement has comments from Suda himself, and is presented as is:
Rounding up a little, Grasshopper Manufacture has been in the business of developing super-bloody action games for almost 30 years. Our latest, newly-announced title, ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN – abbreviated as “RomeDead”…? “RomeMan”…? Maybe just “IsA”…? I don’t know, we’ll figure that out later. Personally I think “IsA” sounds kinda cool. Just kidding. Anyway, we’ll set up a proper abbreviation for the title for social media later, so please be sure to help us make it a thing!
At this point, our development team is working at full force to get this thing finished. Back in the day, this would’ve been right around the time when staff members started bringing in sleeping bags to stay overnight in the studio, but nowadays we make sure that everyone gets enough time to rest and refresh properly. I’ll never forget the craziness of working all night in a frenzy back in our salad days, receiving warning mails for doing too much overtime (this actually happened). The final stage of game development is really similar to the world of the movie Beautiful Dreamer, like the night just before a big school festival. Man, it’s been awhile – now I want to watch Beautiful Dreamer again. What, you don’t know that movie…? I guess maybe a lot of you are a bit too young to remember it… It’s probably streaming somewhere, so check it out sometime.
Anyway, as for what’s good about this game… It’s all written out up above, so make sure to give it a good read! Romeo Is A Dead Man is scheduled for release in 2026, probably. Why “probably”? That’s kinda obvious, isn’t it? That One Game had its release date announced, right? Every publisher wants to make sure to steer clear of That One Game’s release date. But what if we were to flex a little and release it on the same day… Yeah, nope – just thinking about that is way too scary. Alright then, see you later.
Grasshopper Manufacture was acquired by NetEase Games back in 2021, and this is the second game the developer since the acquisition, the first being a remaster for Shadows Of The Damned.
It’s nice to see Grasshopper Manufacture continues to manufacture Grasshopper games. Romeo Is A Dead Man is credited to be created by both Suda51 and game director Ren Yamazaki. And the trailer even lists out the whole credits, which is a baller move for a studio that has one of the few that one would regard as auteurs in the video games industry.
Romeo Is A Dead Man will be out in 2026, maybe, for the PS5, PC (Steam, Microsoft Store) and Xbox Series X|S.