Arabian fantasy adventure game 1001: Threads of Mizan was revealed today as one of the big triple-A games financed by Saudi Arabia.
The high-end game was revealed today at Opening Night Live as an epic adventure inspired by the lore of One Thousand and One Nights.
MBC Game Studio, which is funded by Saudi Arabian broadcast company MBC, revealed at Opening Night Live its debut title. Ever since Saudi Arabia began bankrolling game companies five years ago, I expected something like this, as the Saudis want to see their culture on the global gaming stage just like any other country. But I was not expecting this.
The new studio is led by CEO Daniel Engelhardt and COO Trevor Williams, alongside a global team drawn from acclaimed studios including BioWare, Hi-Rez, Ubisoft Montréal and Bungie, bringing deep expertise in gameplay, world-building and creative development.
The game supports one to three players online. You can play it solo or with friends. It will be on all the platforms you would expect: PS 5, Steam, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S, and the Epic Games Store, all for simultaneous launch. That’s a big bet.
Together, they are bringing to life a sprawling Arabian fantasy adventure with a breathtaking, handcrafted world to explore, colossal boss battles, and cooperative play at its heart. 1001 Threads of Mizan will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC. The launch date isn’t yet revealed.
“We’re incredibly proud to announce 1001 Threads of Mizan, a true labor of love inspired by rich Arabic folklore from One Thousand and One Nights and beyond,” said Engelhardt, CEO of MBC Game Studio. “With fast-paced traversal that combines grounded and aerial mastery with colossal combat against large-scale jinn creatures and immersive exploration, this game is designed to capture the beauty and spirit of these timeless stories in a heroic gameplay experience that can be shared with friends.”
United by the famed Storyweaver, Shahrazad, three unlikely heroes, Yusra, Malik and Sufyan,
will rediscover the lost power of the Mizan in a quest to take down an ancient jinn king before
his thirst for vengeance destroys humanity. It’s a journey made to be shared: built for up to three players with drop-in, drop-out co-op, you and your friends can take to the skies on flying carpets to bring down Jinn of colossal scale together. The scene is reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus.
The flying carpet traversal and gameplay system is at the heart of 1001 Threads of Mizan and allows players to fly through the world, delivering a sense of adventure, speed and possibility that opens up a world of storytelling and gameplay opportunities.
“Our vision started with a simple question, ‘what if you could experience an expansive
adventure in the grand tradition of single player epics, but fully cooperatively with your friends?’” said Lars Bonde, creative director, in a statement. “We were inspired by the generation of players who grew up in shared, social worlds, and with 1001 Threads of Mizan, we are bringing that sense of connection into the fast-paced, combat-driven gameplay experience we believe co-op players will expect as they discover the depth of this incredible folklore that combines fantasy with rich history and culture.”
1001 Threads of Mizan will be on the show floor at Gamescom this week for consumer, press
and content creator demos. Players from all over the world can get a first taste of the game’s
co-op gameplay and flight combat as they take on the menacing, all-powerful Nazjush in the
demo’s culminating boss battle.
Origins
MBC Game Studio is a global video game developer and publisher focused on creating
high-quality, original games for players worldwide. Representing a worldwide team, the studio
brings together international talent to craft distinctive games grounded in creativity, care and
player-first design.
Backed by MBC Group, the largest media company in the Middle East, MBC Game Studio is building a portfolio of original first- and third-party titles to bring distinctive ideas to life through fun gameplay and world-building that can be shared with friends. The studio is currently developing its first title, 001 Threads of Mizan, an action-adventure inspired by the
folklore of One Thousand and One Nights.
Besides Engelhardt, MBC Game Studio’s leaders include Trevor Williams, COO; Lars Bonde, creative director; and Scott Lussier, game director. They got started a little over two years ago. I spoke mostly with Engelhardt, Williams and Bonde.
Heroes from an ancient world
The heroes are based on people who lived in the region during the mythological times. The characters include Yusra, the Relic Hunter; Malik, the Warrior; and Sufya, the Pirate. I got to play the pre-alpha demo and look closer at the game that players at Gamescom could also play.
The demo started with a trailer that began with Shahrazad, the narrator of 1001 Nights. She is a compelling narrator who is from the region, adding a touch of authenticity to the storytelling. The trailer is animated in the style of the region, and Shahrazad reveals the lore of the game.
“Come close, and I will tell you a tale of two worlds at war, set ablaze by a smokeless flame, and fueled by those called to fight. Whispers on the desert wind come from those who are unseen. The Jinn. Once the children of Earth and the Jinn flourished, united until betrayal split their worlds apart. Now the veil is thinning. Two worlds collide as they wage a war of vengeance. Yet many stories remain untold. To avoid destruction, we have but one hope: soulless. Heed my words. This story begins with you,” Shahrazad said.
The words feel like the start of a Disney ride, Engelhardt said. That beginning is so good it shows how much the team, which is largely not Middle Eastern, has paid attention to the storytelling and being true to the region’s lore.
Another trailer shows the contrast between two stories, one of adversity and one of prosperity. Jinn are supernatural beings from ancient Arabian religion and Islamic tradition. They live in a parallel realm.
Making sure it works as a game, not just a story
But this is where the twist on the plot of MBC Game Studio’s 1001 Nights fantasy is new. It takes us back to an animated tale in the tradition of mythology. Long ago, two kings, one human, one Jinn, forged a bond between their worlds. They built a shared world and civilization that spanned both. But hate and envy tore it apart. Chaos erupted.
“Legions marched upon the radiant city. What was fashioned for peace, the two kings reforged for war,” Shahrazad said. “The kings and the Mizan fought to protect all they held dear, and though they stood victorious, the human king beheld the full destructive power of the Jinn. Fear took root, and it unraveled their brotherhood. The human king turned the weapons of the Mizan against the Jinn, and he drove them from the Earth. The world grew smaller for it.”
Bonde showed a demo where you hop onto flying carpets, which is just really fun for world traversal. There’s a big wonderful world that you can explore with the carpets. They make combat fast and fluid. They work well when you fight together as a team.
And it turns out that you really need to take full advantage of the flying carpets as you take on the full destructive firepower of the Jinn. The demo begins with the three adventurers: Malik, Sufyan, and Yusra, and each of them has a very different identity and a play style, and a backstory. Yusra, for instance, fights with a bow and arrows.
I flew around and broke things and battled Jinn. But then we came across a colossal boss battle, led by a creature named the Sand Knight. Yusra does a good job breaking up the enemy’s concentration as they’re about to do real damage. Sufyan has a cool whip blade that can do an area attack against multiple enemies. Malik is more like a heavy fighter. They all have to be nimble in the boss fight because the Sand Knight can throw mini tornadoes. There’s also Najou, a fallen Jinn princess who is a colossus. If you fight her all at once, you can distract her and take down the colossal enemy.
“We have a really incredible team of local experts and literary historians that are ingrained in the development process,” Engelhardt said.
The studio is brand new and it has a team that is spread out. It has created a new IP that is different from just a retelling of the Arabian Nights. It has its own publishing organization. There are people from 18 different countries on the team.
Being authentic with the fantasy, culture and the history
Bonde added, “We took a really deliberate approach in how we built the studio from zero to one. We have a diverse set of people from across 18 different countries working on this project, and because of that, and the fact that we’re developing a new IP, we wanted to ensure that publishing and development lived in the same house.”
He said the publishing team sat down together with the dev team and really synced on the story and the direction for the game so they could operate as one team.
“It’s been really amazing to have that close collaboration between the development and the publishing side. We have a really significant team internally that helps with market research and play tests and gains insights as we’re thinking about how we want to adapt this mythology and build a game inspired by it, but also like really focusing on the mechanics,” Bonde said.
It helps a lot that the mythology is very game-like, with flying carpets, massive bosses, and other stories ripe for games.
“There are so many elements of this mythology we could have fun with,” Bonde said.
Engelhardt said, “If I think back to some of the games I worked on at Lionsgate, it was so special to be able to get a creator of a franchise partnered with a game development team. In this case, of course, the creator of 1001 Arabian Nights is not with us, nor is it that they’re a single creator. It’s a collection of stories that were told over thousands of years. One of the first things we did as we were building the team was bring in local experts, literary historians, as we had mentioned, and so they’ve been really infused in the design process. And so as we’ve been building the studio, the mechanics of the game, thinking about the publishing campaign, all of that is coming from a place of just tremendous passion and enthusiasm for this mythology that we get to play with.”
Engelhardt noted how players are coming from the perspective of playing Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft in an incredibly social arena. That’s why the team turned to co-op as a way to experience the world, the story, and the art together.
I asked if they thought about this game as a global story or a local culture story.
“Absolutely global,” Engelhardt said. “When we thought about this game initially, one of the things that we really wanted to try to build a new IP or franchise. We wanted to tap into something really significant, and so we started looking around the world for compelling mythologies that we could tap into because it gives you so much depth to like dive into.”
And it’s good that Arabian Nights is globally know because of tales of Aladdin, Sinbad and Alibaba.
“We see it as a new fantasy game, and we hope players agree with that and say, ‘Hey, this is a new fantasy world that I want to dive into. That being said, we do feel like obviously a lot of connective tissue to the region because of the lore that we’re playing with,” Engelhardt said. “We believe it’s going to resonate there very meaningfully. But this is absolutely a global game, and we built the team as such, and it’s a global marketing campaign.”
I asked about whether it felt similar to the Chinese lore in Black Myth: Wukong. Engelhardt said that wasn’t as much of the inspiration, but it was similar in terms of thinking about the lore, even before Black Myth: Wukong launched.
“We’re tapping into lore that is just as rich,” he said.
The game will feature the Bedouin life and geographic areas of the ancient Middle East. The aim is to get everything correct about the culture. But they’re also creating with the knowledge that the tales are globally appealing. It’s a little different from the sensibilities around Uncharted or Tomb Raider, where stealing ancient artifacts was central to the game.
“One thing that is really important is that it is a fantasy game. We’re rooted in a geographical location that really exists and existed. We’re in a historical time here, but it’s the fantasy version of all that. We’ve tried to do is take inspiration from the stories that are one Arabic folklore and create a world in which all these stories could have taken place,” Bonde said. “It has a degree of reality, but it’s in a fantasy setting. It’s a respectful way of doing this.”
The team has both native English speakers and native Arabic speakers. As an example, the actress who plays the narrator.
Taking the triple-A road
The game has triple-A sensibilities, but the leaders would not quantify the size of the team or the number of hours of gameplay that players can expect from the title, or the shipment window. They will do that at another time. But since the game got started in 2023, after the post-pandemic slowdown started happening, the team was made with the idea of keeping it small, and that’s probably a good thing.
And it uses the Unreal game engine, but the team has a policy against using generative AI in the game.
“We certainly want it to be a media experience, and this is a pretty expansive world that you’re getting to explore, but we’ll talk more about kind of the details of that later,” Engelhardt said.
The team is not talking about precise numbers for how many developers it has. But it is a big team with triple-A ambitions. That makes it rare at this time, because nobody is really taking such big swings on new IP anymore.
“As a new studio, we really want to earn the respect of players,” Engelhardt said.
“In order for us to be successful, the game has to be great, right? Great games are made by great people and very talented people. So the project really started with, let’s assemble a really talented team, starting with Lars as the creative director, to build a vision that we could believe in, and then the other piece that we were really conscious of is we really wanted to make a game that we felt looked and felt different than other things that were out there,” Engelhardt said.
He added, “We wanted to make sure that we could tell that voice together. And so we’ve also been really focused on building a publishing team that could bring it to market and really have those like two pieces live together. Because at the end of the day, we’re passionate about what we’re building. We’re not building for ourselves, and so having a publishing organization that really deeply understands the game we’re making can help guide the development team to make commercially minded decisions while still having the creative freedom.”
Working with MBC and building the team
Williams said, “We’ve been humbled to work with some of the most incredible creative people, developers, engineers, publishers, marketers across the world as we started to build this team, and it’s literally been built brick by brick. It’s been a it’s been a long process, but we wanted to be very direct and specific about how we did that hiring, and we wanted people to understand where we were going with the story, where we were going with the game, why we were building this, and how we are bringing people in.”
Engelhardt said that MBC has a lot of financial capital to support the work, and it took the approach of working with established game leaders who could slow cook an idea and turn it into a hand-crafted work of art. It entrusted them to be entrepreneurial and build a new intellectual property with creative freedom, he said.
“We are backed by MBC Group, which is the largest media company in the Middle East, and this is such a really interesting part of our story that we have a media company entering the game space in a really bold way, where they’re not seeing it necessarily as a licensing opportunity so much as an opportunity to build new IP,” Engelhardt said.
As the campaign plan came together, Engelhardt said, “We knew the first time we talked about this game, players had to be able to play it. We had to have a demo. We knew that when we built a trailer, that trailer had to come from in-engine assets and gameplay. We knew that we had to be available, and we had to have that connective tissue with the player as we came out. So it was pretty explicit that we built the company slowly and methodically over time, and we kept everything pretty quiet as long as we could until we needed to bring players in.”
And Engelhardt said, “And we’ve just been really disciplined about just continuing to push and build and make sure that we’re targeting towards something that we feel like, again, players would tell us at Gamescom that we feel can stand out in the marketplace.”
And Gamescom is the company’s first shot on goal.
Disclosure: Gamescom paid my way to Germany for the event. The content of this story is solely the responsibility of GamesBeat.