Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time both reinvigorated the long-dead franchise, but its future has remained unclear due to reshuffling at Activision and the silence since Crash 4‘s release. However, a new report states that the series is getting another entry, but it won’t be a platformer. Instead, it is said to be a multiplayer title.
As noted by PureXbox, Windows Central Editor and insider Jez Corden took to the Windows Central Gaming Podcast to speak about this Crash game. Around an hour and 29 minutes into the episode, Corden was prompted about a new Crash installment. After some joking, he said it would be a multiplayer game and a “four-player brawler, almost.” While possibly unrelated, he later replied to a tweet about a new Crash Bash, the Eurocom-developed party game that released in 2000, saying it would be “very hot.”
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However, he said it wasn’t called Wumpa League, which brings back another rumor from last year. Liam Robertson from Did You Know Gaming? tweeted in September 2021 that Wumpa League was a stand-alone game or Crash 4 expansion that was a “competitive multiplayer collectathon platformer with open 3D environments.” It allegedly had players collecting fruits they would then have to bank in order to score, as well as a “cool traversal mechanic.” A banner saying “Wumpa League” was also in a Crash 4 promotional video on Twitter in November 2020, which could somewhat echo the masks found in an ad that teased Crash 4 over six months before its reveal.
But the fate of it seemed ambiguous since he claimed that some were second guessing the concept and others got unceremoniously taken off the project. Robertson then recently said this title doesn’t seem connected to the one Corden spoke of.
Toys for Bob has not specifically talked about Crash’s future, yet the team did say that we would “see more of him very soon” during a 25th anniversary celebration from September 2021, which was one day after Robertson tweeted about Wumpa League. Toys for Bob has since been folded into the Call of Duty machine and is a support studio for the huge shooter series. But if this report is accurate, it would appear as though the developer (if it is the team behind the game) has enough bandwidth to help with Call of Duty and develop its own original titles.
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It seemed like Toys for Bob was hinting at something, as it sent some influencers Crash-themed piñatas around the time of that anniversary video. This mirrors the fuzzy dice it shipped out before the Crash Team Racing remaster. There was also a very loose (that should be taken with a big grain of salt) roadmap that supposedly leaked out, showing plans for a possible multiplayer game. It’s possible (and given the multiple leaks, likely) that the Wumpa League game died and was reborn as something else, but, regardless, time will tell and reveal what leaks are true and what ones aren’t. Geoff Keighley has also had a long-running relationship with Crash, as he has featured the marsupial in his shows and even revealed the CTR remaster at The Game Awards in 2018, meaning it’s possible that a Crash game could show up at Summer Game Fest Live.