Wildlight Entertainment has been developing the game "in secret" for four years.
Instead of a massive, long-awaited sequel or a rumoured remake, The Game Awards 2025 handed the final reveal to a brand-new IP from a debut studio. Highguard, a new free-to-play shooter being developed by Wildlight Entertainment with a team of developers who worked on titles such as Titanfall, Apex Legends, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, is arriving in January 2026.
According to The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley, Highguard has been in development in secret for four years before its first reveal, which was at The Game Awards 2025 awarding ceremony.
High Guard release date, gameplay details, platforms and everything we know so far
“We’re a veteran team who’ve spent years together, creating some of the biggest hits in gaming, including Apex Legends, Call of Duty and Titanfall,” said Wildlight Entertainment co-founder and CEO Dusty Welch in a press release. “With our first game, we are hyper-focused on creating a new gaming universe of similarly epic scale and quality.”
Wildlight Entertainment co-founder and game director Chad Grenier added, “We created Wildlight because we wanted a game studio where design leads and new games can be built without compromise. Our time on Apex Legends and Titanfall taught us a lot about what it takes to build and sustain a successful franchise.”
According to Wildlight Entertainment, Highguard is a player-versus-player raid shooter where players “ride, fight and raid as Wardens”, arcane gunslingers sent to battle for control of a mythical continent. Crews compete for the Shieldbreaker before pushing into enemy territory to destroy their base and secure the land.
Players can fight on horseback or on foot across massive maps. The reveal trailer showed human and monstrous enemies, along with a number of surprising moments, including a “massive castle-sized tank with a lion’s head on the front”. While the trailer kept hard details limited, it teased a wide array of possible characters, each with different abilities and potential roles.
Wildlight also highlighted its focus on elaborate, highly detailed environments. The trailer moved between ancient castles, underground mines and other striking locations, giving players plenty of variety when planning their approach in each match.
Unlike earlier years where the biggest reveals felt far off, Highguard sounds close to finished. It launches on 26 January 2026 with cross-play and cross-progression on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PS5.
