Unknown 9: Awakening is a 2024 action-adventure video game developed by Reflector Entertainment and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment for Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X and Series S. Set in India in the early 20th century, the game focuses on a woman with magical powers fighting against a mysterious organization that killed her mentor.
[4] A key feature of the game is the ability to body-swap by tapping into the main characters supernatural powers which allows for alternative means of traversing a level.
[2] Reflector Entertainment was founded by Alexandre Amancio and Canadian businessman and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté in 2017.
[7] Amancio was a video game developer who had previously worked as creative director for Assassin's Creed Unity.
[8] Preliminary plans for the Unknown 9 series including the earliest announcement of a video game were first revealed in October 2018 at the New York Comic Con.
[10][11] Additionally, Reflector Entertainment opened their studio based in Maison Alcan in 2020, a building that Laliberté purchased for 50 million dollars.
I’d like to support the next generation of creative companies’, because he wished someone would’ve helped him when he was trying to (found) the Cirque.”[12] The series was described at that time as utilizing a transmedia form of storytelling which uses a multimedia approach to tell its overall story, spanning video games, a scripted podcast, comic books, and other forms of entertainment.
IGN Italia praised the game's story driven narrative and adventure elements, saying that the problems stemmed from technical issues.
[28] Edge gave it a poor review, saying "You could also call it derivative and crudely executed, and no transmedia offering can compensate for that.
[32] The statement said in part "This decision correlates directly with the failure of the studio's ambitious and courageous first project, a new IP with a rich transmedia universe," and "The performance of the release didn't come near the company expectations, after numerous timeline adjustments and investments, both financially and other, and didn't warrant any further exploration in this universe.