Graft Is Harebrained’s New Game Slated for 2026

Harebrained Schemes has started teasing their new game called Graft. The brief video appears to show a sci-fi setting, which may or may not be based in the Shadowrun universe. Gamers interested in following the development of Graft can register for the newsletter on the official website. Don't expect to play the game this year or the next, though: the LinkedIn profile of Executive Producer Mike McCain (who returned to Harebrained Schemes earlier this year after directing BATTLETECH and Shadowrun: Dragonfall) mentions an unannounced game launching in 2026.

Then again, it's an appropriate timeline if you know what the studio has been up to. HBS launched the turn-based tactics game The Lamplighters League last October. Unfortunately, the game's reception and sales performance were so weak that parent company Paradox Interactive quickly parted ways with the developer, causing Harebrained Schemes to lay off many developers. The studio was also forced to go indie and seek funding elsewhere for its new project, which we now know to be called Graft.

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As for what it actually is, we know very little about it from the HBS blog. In January, they wrote:

It is audacious. It builds on the best of the studio’s history while still being something new and compelling in the strategy space. It’s narratively rich, and there are so many natural connections between the narrative themes and the gameplay systems.

The developers made a demo and showed it to publishers at GDC 2024, where it reportedly got a lot of attention, according to Mike McCain:

This indie band has been firing on all cylinders! Iterating daily, and making smart and pragmatic decisions with some big creative wind in our sails. We landed in San Francisco with a stronger prototype and vision for our next game than we could have imagined at the start of the year. We met with a whole bunch of potential partners at GDC, and got some fantastic