A good spin-off can be a breath of fresh air for franchises. They don’t necessarily come with an expectation of a sequel, and can get a bit experimental, too.
Video games certainly aren’t strangers to spin-offs. Some might have even evolved into their own franchises, like RGG Studio’s Judgment being a spin-off from their Yakuza\Like a Dragon series. This is a topic big enough for its own article.
Instead, today we’re going to focus on a very specific type of spin-offs: ones made by a different developer studio, in a completely different style. Throughout the article we’ll refer to them as collaborations, because unlike some in-house spin-offs, these ones signify a cooperation between two distinct companies.
| Game | Release | Genre | Developer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Zone Of The Enders The 2nd Runner Mrs | 2018-09-04 | Action | Konami |
 | Contra Operation Galuga | 2024-03-12 | Action | WayForward |
 | Castlevania Anniversary Collection | 2019-05-16 | Adventure | Konami Digital Entertainment |
 | The Casting Of Frank Stone | 2024-09-03 | Horror | Supermassive Games |
 | Vampire Survivors | 2021-12-17 | Indie | Poncle |
 | Ruined King A League Of Legends Story | 2021 | RPG | Airship Syndicate |
 | Tales From The Borderlands | 2014-11-25 | Adventure | Telltale Games |
 | Monster Hunter World | 2018-08-09 | Action | CAPCOM |
 | Powerwash Simulator | 2021-05-19 | Simulator | FuturLab |
 | Dark Messiah Of Might Magic | 2006-10-25 | Fighting | Arkane Studios |
 | Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon | 2013-05-01 | Adventure | Ubisoft Montreal |
 | The Typing Of The Dead Overkill | 2013-10-29 | Arcade & Platform | Modern Dream |
 | Resident Evil Revelations | 2013-05-20 | Adventure | CAPCOM |
The Casting of Frank Stone
| Release date: | 2024-09-03 |
| Genre: | Horror |
| Developer: | Supermassive Games |
Behaviour Interactive’s Dead by Daylight is an asymmetrical PvP pitting several Survivors against monstrous Killers.
Supermassive Games is a studio specialized in making interactive horror movies where every scene can go terribly (and amusingly) wrong. It doesn’t seem like a natural pairing, but September 2024 brought us The Casting of Frank Stone, a Supermassive game in the DBD universe.
The story, in a typical Supermassive fashion, follows several characters, but also plays out across several decades, starting all the way back in 1963. It involves a cursed movie tape, a murderer, and a mystery, all good stuff you wouldn’t normally get from Dead by Daylight, but perfectly in line with Supermassive’s style. Hopefully, there’s more to come, DbD’s lore is fertile ground for storytelling.
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Vampire Survivors
| Release date: | 2021-12-17 |
| Genre: | Indie |
| Developer: | Poncle |
We started with a very high-concept collab, but sometimes a clever implementation is just as good. Take, for example, Vampire Survivors and its approach.
Poncle’s collaborated with two major franchises, bringing them over to the silly bullet heaven. One is the Covid-era multiplayer darling Among Us, via the Emergency Meeting DLC, and the other is… Contra, through the Operation Guns DLC!
That’s right, although VS is a tribute to Castlevania, it’s the other legendary game from Konami that got an official collaboration. The integrations are very fun, with loads of thematically appropriate new characters, weapons and maps, proving obvious understanding of the source material’s appeal. It’s not overly serious, it’s just more of the good fun Vampire Survivors has been serving for 2 years already.
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Ruined King: A League of Legends Story
| Release date: | 2021 |
| Genre: | RPG |
| Developer: | Airship Syndicate |
League of Legends is a MOBA with a lot of lore that doesn’t matter a whole lot. Wouldn’t it be neat if it did, though?
That’s the appeal of Airship Syndicate’s turn-based RPG: Ruined King: A League of Legends Story. It got a spot on this list, because it cribs a lot of its gameplay from the developer’s previous game, Battle Chasers: Nightwar, except with the setting and characters drawn from LoL.
Much like Battle Chasers, Ruined King takes inspiration from Japanese RPGs of old, with battles waged between two immobile parties exchanging blows according to an intricate, but not obscure, initiative system. While the mechanics create compelling gameplay, the story that drives the game focuses on mysterious mists bearing the soul-damning Harrowing, related to man named Viego.
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Tales from the Borderlands
| Release date: | 2014-11-25 |
| Genre: | Adventure |
| Developer: | Telltale Games |
There was a time when Telltale Games were at top of the world when it came to adapting licenses into interactive, usually cel-shaded TV-shows.
They made their mark with The Walking Dead and A Wolf Among Us (based on comic book series Fables), but between November 2014 and October 2015 they released several episodes of their take on the world of Gearbox’ Borderlands.
Set a few years after Borderlands 2, Tales from the Borderlands puts a corporate employee and a con-artist on a path to discovering a Valur which might change the duo’s life. Much like other games from Telltale, it’s mostly a point-and-click adventure game with strong focus on dialogues, choices, and Quick Time Events, a strong departure from the franchise’s usual first-person looting-shooting.
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Monster Hunter World
| Release date: | 2018-08-09 |
| Genre: | Action |
| Developer: | CAPCOM |
Monster Hunter World has a few fun collaborations. Some of them are just with other Capcom teams across the figurative corridor, but there were two which went much further.
One was the collab with Square Enix’s Final Fantasy, which not only brought in an epic fight against the Behemoth, but also a wonderfully silly hunt for Kulu-Ya-Ku juiced up by a magic rock to incredible size and power.
The other is a treat for fans of The Witcher 3, because not only does Geralt come to the Monster Hunter World, there’s an entire quest, with conversations, an investigation, the whole nine yards. The quest not only comes with a challenging fight against an empowered Leshen, you also get a lot of cool stuff, like a special Sword & Shield styled after the witcher’s iconic blade.
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PowerWash Simulator
| Release date: | 2021-05-19 |
| Genre: | Simulator |
| Developer: | FuturLab |
PowerWash Simulator doesn’t immediately come across as a game which would have many collaborations… and yet it does.
This relaxing, low-stakes game got a whole bunch of them! You’ll get to power wash Tifa’s bar, as well as several machines from Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and do some work on the Croft Manor as seen in the Tomb Raider games.
There’s also a Warhammer 40k collaboration letting you clean Imperial machines of heretical gunk. In every case, you get more of what the core game offers: a satisfying simulation of blasting dirt away with powerful, concentrated blasts of water. It’s not complicated, it’s just a chill experience, even though getting to some nooks and crannies can be a little bit of a chore.
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Dark Messiah of MIght and Magic
| Release date: | 2006-10-25 |
| Genre: | Fighting |
| Developer: | Arkane Studios |
Even before Arkane Studios was famous for Dishonored, Prey, and Deathloop, they had their head in the immersive sim game.
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is technically set in the same universe as the Might & Magic RPGs as well as the heroes of Might & Magic strategy games, but rather than being a dungeon crawler or a tactical challenge… it’s a first-person action game with truly smashing combat.
Dark Messiah made quite a splash back in the day. It’s melee combat was precise, punchy and satisfying, magic felt immersive and interactive, and the environments were practically built for creative solutions. The game also has one of the most satisfying kicks in gaming, capable of sending foes off ledges or into fires and numerous spiky implements. It still feels great to play, too!
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A momentary, but welcome, distraction
This concludes our look at a few gaming spin-offs handed to a completely different developer to work their own magic. Some of them are fully separate games, others are optional content in a different game, but in all instances they are more than just a skin or a voice pack.
If you’re interested in checking out any of the games, you’ll find attractive deals on our marketplace, whether you need the source material, the spin-offs themselves, or other games of the developers involved.