Hideki Kamiya, the director of Resident Evil 2 and founder of Clovers studio, has gone on record with a pitch for the most unexpected Resident Evil game imaginable: a cozy life-sim spinoff where a retired Leon S. Kennedy fishes in the countryside, bakes bread, and fixes his neighbor's oven.
The idea came up on June 30, 2026, when a fan asked Kamiya on X whether he could one day make a new Resident Evil game that wraps up the storylines of Leon and Claire Redfield. His answer was not what anyone expected from the man who put Leon through Raccoon City in Resident Evil 5 and its surrounding entries.
Leon's long-awaited retirement?
What Kamiya actually said
"If I made it, it'd turn into a game where retired Leon goes fishing in the countryside, forages for wild veggies, bakes bread, walks the dog, tends a home garden, drives 50 km to the general store for supplies, invites old buddies over for a barbecue, fixes the neighborhood grandma's oven at her request, sells homemade lemonade at the local festival," Kamiya wrote on X. "But that'd be cool, right... ?"
Here's the thing: he's not entirely joking. In a follow-up post, Kamiya directly addressed Capcom: "There are a lot of voices out there saying they want something like a Resident Evil that's not scary. So if you have some free time, please consider making it... I want to play it too."
This tracks with something Kamiya has been saying for a while. Earlier this year, his studio Clovers posted a video of him grumbling about Resident Evil Requiem, reiterating his long-standing request for a "non-scary mode" in Resident Evil games. "I just want to enjoy the puzzles and the combat," he said at the time. "I don't need the scary stuff."
The man who created Leon Kennedy apparently has no interest in being scared by him.
The irony of the series' co-creator hating horror
Kamiya's relationship with the Resident Evil franchise is a genuinely strange one. He worked as a designer on the original 1996 game before directing Resident Evil 2, which introduced Leon and Claire and is widely considered one of the best entries in the series. After that, he moved on to create Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, and Bayonetta at PlatinumGames.
None of those games are horror. That's not a coincidence.
The cozy spinoff pitch isn't a serious development announcement, to be clear. Kamiya is currently focused entirely on the Okami sequel at his self-funded Clovers studio, a project he announced at The Game Awards 2024 after reuniting with Capcom. He's said himself that at Clovers' current scale, the Okami sequel is all they can handle. Any future collaboration with Capcom on another IP is speculative at this point.
But the suggestion lands differently when you consider who's making it. This isn't a random fan posting on a forum. It's the person who directed Leon's debut, calling on Capcom to think about what happens to these characters after the shooting stops.
Why the idea actually has legs
Cozy games are not a niche anymore. Stardew Valley has sold over 41 million copies. Animal Crossing: New Horizons moved more than 45 million units. The appetite for low-stakes, life-sim gameplay from people who also play action games is enormous and well-documented.
What most players miss about Kamiya's pitch is how well it fits Leon specifically. Leon has been through Raccoon City, rural Spain, and bio-weapon outbreaks across multiple continents. The fantasy of watching that character finally decompress, grow tomatoes, and drive an hour to a hardware store has a real emotional pull. It's the same reason people loved the quieter moments in The Last of Us or the fishing minigame in Final Fantasy XV.
The Resident Evil series has already experimented with tone. Resident Evil 7 stripped the formula back to first-person horror. Resident Evil Village leaned into gothic action spectacle. A cozy spinoff wouldn't be any stranger than those pivots, and it would open the franchise to an entirely different audience.
Capcom has also shown it's willing to think creatively about the series right now. Resident Evil: Code Veronica was just announced as the next remake at Summer Game Fest, and Resident Evil Requiem shipped a surprise roguelike bonus mode after launch. The studio is clearly not locked into a single template.
Where this fits in the current Resident Evil moment
Resident Evil Requiem, the ninth mainline entry, sold over 7 million copies and is still receiving post-launch content, including a confirmed story expansion. Leon appears in Requiem alongside new protagonist Grace Ashcroft, and Requiem's director has already teased that Leon could return "when he's 70." So the character isn't going anywhere.
That said, Kamiya's pitch isn't really about continuity. It's about a genre experiment. A cozy Resident Evil wouldn't need to be canon. It could sit alongside the main series the same way Resident Evil Gaiden or the Outbreak games did, as a side project that lets the franchise breathe without disrupting the horror timeline.
The key here is that Kamiya explicitly said he doesn't want to make it himself. He wants Capcom to make it so he can play it. That's a pretty specific kind of enthusiasm.
For anyone who wants to revisit where Leon's story really took shape before any hypothetical retirement, the Resident Evil 5 guides collection covers the game that pushed the series into full co-op action territory, which makes the contrast with a fishing simulator even more absurd.
Whether Capcom ever actually builds something like this is an open question. But the fact that the director who created Leon Kennedy is publicly asking for it is the kind of creative pressure that occasionally turns into something real. Capcom is actively expanding the Resident Evil universe right now, with a live-action film in development and the Veronica remake on the way. The window for a spinoff experiment is arguably as open as it's ever been.
If you want to catch up on the mainline series while waiting to see what Capcom does next, the gaming guides hub has you covered across the franchise.
