Capcom’s Resident Evil Spin-Off Sounds Like A Dream Come True

The Resident Evil franchise is one of the lucky few horror giants that have managed to survive in the modern day, with fans being fortunate enough to get a steady stream of new releases to look forward to. Even when the franchise goes years without official announcements, there's still no shortage of leaks and rumors to get fans excited about a new mainline entry or spin-off project.

While Capcom is no stranger to interesting or concerning scrapped projects, one spin-off game that the well-known Resident Evil 2 director Hideki Kamiya recently joked about making has fans convinced it's exactly what the series needs moving forward, finally giving our heroes some sense of respite after all their ordeals.

Kamiya's original post described a new Resident Evil game where Leon goes fishing in the countryside, forages for wild veggies, bakes bread, and even "invites old buddies over for a barbecue," as noted by Dexerto on X. These are just part of a long list of events, all of which sound straight out of something you would expect in a cozy farming simulator like Stardew Valley.

Kamiya himself hasn't been involved with the Resident Evil series since the release of Resident Evil 2 in 1998, and he doesn't have a cozy RE project that was ever actually in development. Still, fans have latched onto the idea as a way to see Leon finally get his retirement after years of slugging through infested cities over his nearly 30-year career.

X user Mr. baba votes that Leon "deserves a Stardew Valley-style retirement game" after everything he's been through over the series. Other fans have pointed out how the Resident Evil franchise as a whole has grown far beyond a simple survival horror franchise, but into a cultural icon of its own, with iconic returning characters creating their own fandom even among players that "don't really like horror games."

Considering how many painfully tragic Resident Evil characters there are across the series, Leon is far from the only unsung hero that could use some rest and relaxation, either, as Jill, Chris, Claire, or any newer survivors like Grace have well-earned their place at Leon's barbecue party.

Given that a growing numbers of fans have expressed that they would "play the hell out of this" if given the chance, Hideki Kamiya even kept the joke going further on his X account by calling out Capcom directly to say that "there are a lot of voices out there saying they want something like Resident Evil that's not so scary," and that even he himself would "want to play it too."

While it's hard to imagine Resident Evil ever making a full-blown spin-off where we want to live out a happy ending for all of our favorite characters in a Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing-style gameplay experience, the series is no stranger to comedy or creative collaborations with other franchises.

Although it's a slim chance at best, there's still plenty of demand for a small-scale project, or at the very least a cozy game collaboration, to warrant an official acknowledgment from Capcom itself regarding the unique Resident Evil concept, which would certainly be a first for the grim series.