Jeff Kaplan, the longtime Blizzard developer and former game director of Overwatch, has officially revealed his next project. The new title, called The Legend of California, is an open-world multiplayer cowboy shooter that blends survival gameplay with Wild West exploration.
Developed by Kaplan’s studio Kintsugiyama and published by Dreamhaven, the upcoming game marks the first major project Kaplan has shown since leaving Blizzard in 2021. Early details point to a multiplayer survival FPS set during a Gold Rush era, where players can build communities, hunt wildlife, and carve out their own frontier life.
Jeff Kaplan’s First Game Since Leaving Blizzard
Kaplan spent nearly two decades at Blizzard Entertainment, working on World of Warcraft before becoming the game director of Overwatch. He departed the company in April 2021 while Overwatch 2 was still in development.
According to comments Kaplan shared on the Lex Fridman Podcast, the idea for The Legend of California grew out of a long-term passion project with his new studio, Kintsugiyama. The team has quietly been building the game for around four years.
Kaplan described the project as a handcrafted take on California during the Gold Rush era, except the state itself is reimagined as a fictional island.
“We handcrafted the world so the shape of California is always the familiar shape of California, except it’s an island,” Kaplan explained during the podcast.
A Multiplayer Cowboy Survival Game
At its core, The Legend of California is an open-world multiplayer survival shooter. Players take on the role of frontier settlers exploring the island, gathering resources and establishing their own homesteads.
The gameplay combines several survival mechanics. Players can craft equipment, hunt wildlife, gather materials, and build ranches or settlements across the landscape. The game also includes gunfights, optional PvP encounters, and hostile camps to challenge players exploring the frontier.
Players can choose to go it alone or team up with friends, with the game supporting co-op groups of up to four players.
The official Steam description highlights precision-focused gunplay alongside deep crafting systems that cover weapons, tools, and even food preparation.
A Dynamic Open World With Procedural Maps
One of the more unusual elements of The Legend of California is its map system. Rather than using a fully static world, the game uses procedurally generated maps.
Major landmarks remain fixed, including iconic locations inspired by real California geography such as Yosemite. However, other points of interest shift between servers, meaning each playthrough can feature different layouts and exploration paths.
The game also avoids traditional level systems. Instead, servers assign different difficulty tiers to regions. An area that acts as a beginner zone on one server might become a dangerous endgame region on another, depending on how the server’s difficulty tiers are distributed.
A Western Setting With Survival And Community Building
The game’s reveal trailer shows players exploring forests and mountains, stalking wildlife like buffalo, and engaging in tense shootouts with revolvers and rifles.
Beyond combat, the game emphasises survival and community building. Players can mine resources, build structures, and develop their own ranch or homestead across the island.
Depending on how players approach the world, they can live as solo explorers or work together to create larger settlements and communities.
The mix of gunfights, crafting, and settlement building gives the project a feel that blends elements from Western games like Red Dead Redemption with organised crime storytelling similar to Mafia-style worlds.
Early Access Plans And Playtests
The Legend of California is currently planned for Early Access on PC in 2026. Players can already wishlist the game on Steam.
Kintsugiyama says the project has been in development for four years so far, and the team still considers it a work in progress.
“We formed our team around a single passion project: The Legend of California,” the studio explained on its official website. “Four years in the making and there’s still a ways to go, but we’re excited to start sharing the world we’re building with players.”
Playtests are expected to begin ahead of the Early Access launch as the developers continue refining the multiplayer survival experience.
For longtime Overwatch fans, the reveal is also notable because it marks Jeff Kaplan’s first new game since leaving Blizzard, giving players their first look at the direction he has taken after one of the most influential hero shooters of the last decade.