Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth is a narrative adventure game that Annapurna Interactive announced on 29 June 2023 as the first title from its own internal studio. It is set in Los Angeles in 2033, between Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049, after the Blackout ended replicant production at the Tyrell Corporation. Game director Chelsea Hash led the project under a license from Alcon. The game is in limbo and its status is unclear, as the whole internal team resigned in September 2024 and Steam pulled the store listing from sale and search in December 2025, while Annapurna has never announced a cancellation.
Reveal Trailer
The reveal trailer premiered at the Annapurna Interactive Showcase on 29 June 2023, and IGN posted it on YouTube the same day. It runs about a minute and a half. An unnamed former blade runner narrated over shots of dark Los Angeles towers, a spinner crossing the skyline, police files on a desk, and a coyote standing in an empty building. In the voice-over he explained that many people lost things in the Blackout, that he was lucky to lose only his work, and that the LAPD wanted him back. The trailer ended with a promise of PC and consoles and no date.
Annapurna did not say whether the footage came from the game engine, and the studio never showed gameplay. The Steam page went up with the same narration, a short line about the Blackout, and five stills from the trailer. Those stills showed hands turning a camera lens in a dark room, a red CRT monitor on a reset screen, and a police identity badge among case papers. Steam's store data listed English voice acting, interface text in 12 languages, single-player play, achievements, and full controller support, with Windows 10 as the minimum operating system.
Story And Setting
The game is set in 2033, fourteen years after the November 2019 events of the first film and sixteen years before Officer K's investigation. Its background is the Blackout, a 2022 attack in which an electromagnetic pulse wiped data across the West Coast, destroyed the Tyrell Corporation's records, and brought replicant production to an end. With new replicants banned and few old ones left on Earth, the blade runner units lost their purpose. Annapurna summed up the premise with one question: what does a blade runner do when there are no replicants left to hunt?
The story also comes after the 2021 anime Blade Runner: Black Lotus, which is set in 2032, about a year earlier. By then the replicant ban had been relaxed off-world, and in the short film 2036: Nexus Dawn Niander Wallace persuaded lawmakers to lift it completely with his obedient Nexus-9 models. Labyrinth falls in the gap when replicant hunting had almost stopped on Earth but Wallace was preparing to restart production. The protagonist was a former police blade runner called back into service, and The Mary Sue described the coyote in the trailer as a replicant animal.
Gameplay Details
Annapurna never published a feature list for Labyrinth. In IGN's announcement interview, game director Chelsea Hash described a game with a strong focus on narrative, and Steam classified it as a single-player Adventure title. Reports from the reveal noted that the team drew on details from the production of the 1982 film and on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? No combat, investigation tools, or Voight-Kampff testing were shown, and no press preview took place before the development team left the company.
The closest earlier comparison is Westwood's 1997 Blade Runner, a point-and-click adventure in which rookie Ray McCoy hunted replicants beside Deckard's case. Annapurna's Steam text presented Labyrinth as the series' return to games after about 25 years, which counts from that Westwood release and leaves out the 2022 Enhanced Edition remaster. Annapurna's earlier releases as a publisher, such as What Remains of Edith Finch and Stray, were story-led games, and Hash had worked on Edith Finch and Solar Ash before she took over the internal studio.
Development Team
Annapurna Interactive opened an internal development studio in October 2020. Its first staff included technical director Brett Lajzer, senior producer Evan Hembacher, art director Cosimo Galluzzi, and environment artist Nate Grove. In June 2022 the publisher named Chelsea Hash, the director of Solar Ash at Heart Machine, as game director for the studio's unannounced first project. Hash told IGN that Annapurna approached Alcon Entertainment, which holds the Blade Runner rights, to license the series because the team had a deep love for it.
The game was announced with Alcon Interactive Group, the games division of Alcon, as co-publisher beside Annapurna. Alcon had produced Blade Runner 2049 and the Black Lotus series, and it had worked with Nightdive Studios on the remaster of the Westwood game. Annapurna's studio site described the core staff as senior artists, engineers, and designers with decades of shared experience making games. No console maker was ever named, and the announcement promised only a PC version through Steam and unspecified consoles, with no release window.
Annapurna Resignations
In September 2024, all 25 employees of Annapurna Interactive resigned together after president Nathan Gary's talks with owner Megan Ellison about spinning the games division off as an independent company broke down. Bloomberg first reported the walkout, and IGN confirmed it with its own sources. The group had signed a joint resignation letter at the end of August and left the company on 6 September. IGN understood that Chelsea Hash and every other full-time member of the Blade Runner team were among them, so Labyrinth lost the people who had started it.
Annapurna's remaining leadership told IGN that the situation was a baffler but that the company was focused on moving forward. It promised to honor its commitments to partner studios, continue internal development of Labyrinth, and hire new staff, and the statement closed with a note that the company was hiring. Hector Sanchez, an Annapurna Interactive co-founder who had returned from Epic Games as president of interactive and new media, took charge of the rebuilt division. Gamekult later reported that many of the departed staff, Hash among them, regrouped at the new publisher Fictions.
Steam Delisting
On 10 December 2025, Steam's records showed Labyrinth removed from sale and from store search. The store page could be opened by direct link, but it carried a notice that the game was no longer available on the Steam store, and existing wishlists were not removed. By 17 December the game had also disappeared from Annapurna's official website. The Escapist reported the delisting on 11 December and noted that Supermassive Games had cancelled a different Blade Runner game, Blade Runner: Time to Live, in April of the same year.
Annapurna gave no reason for the removal. PlayStation Universe wrote in January 2026 that the Steam change suggested the planned console versions were in the same position. PCGamesN and Gamekult covered the story in February 2026, and both asked Annapurna for comment without getting an answer. Press coverage treated the delisting as a sign that development had stopped, but the listing itself was not deleted, and the app page with its trailer and screenshots could be reached at its original address in October 2026.
Current Status
In October 2026, Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth has no release date, no store page in search, and no official cancellation. Annapurna has not issued a statement on the game since its September 2024 promise to keep developing it. The Steam entry lists the release as To Be Announced and names Annapurna Interactive as developer and publisher. No new developer has been announced, no new footage has appeared since the 2023 reveal, and the hiring drive after the walkout was never publicly tied to Blade Runner.
The license is the other open question. Alcon controls the Blade Runner games rights and has continued to grow the series with the Prime Video show Blade Runner 2099, so any revival under another studio would depend on Alcon. Until Annapurna or Alcon says otherwise, the project is stalled rather than confirmed as cancelled. If it returns in its announced form, its 2033 story would fill the years between Black Lotus and 2036: Nexus Dawn on the Blade Runner timeline.
Conclusion
Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth was announced in June 2023 as Annapurna Interactive's first in-house game, a narrative adventure about a former blade runner in Los Angeles after the Blackout. Chelsea Hash's team left the company in September 2024, and the Steam listing was pulled from sale and search in December 2025. Annapurna has not confirmed a cancellation, so the game remains unreleased with no date. Its only public material is the 2023 reveal trailer, a short store description, and five screenshots taken from that trailer.
External Sources
- Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth Steam Page
- IGN: Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth Official Reveal Trailer
- IGN: Annapurna's Entire Gaming Team Has Resigned
- Push Square: Annapurna Says Labyrinth Is Still Happening
- The Escapist: Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth Vanishes From Steam
Tag Categories: Blade Runner Games | Blade Runner Lore | News
