The Nier series is deeply beloved and, alas, deeply underserved. The last mainline game in the series was Nier: Automata, which came out in 2017—almost one whole decade ago. I mean, there was also Nier Reincarnation, a mobile gacha from 2021, but I feel spiritually obligated not to count that one.
Hopes were raised when in February of this year, an anniversary stream promised “Neir: Automata to be continued,” filling fans with the hope that Nier: Automata would… you know, continue. Which is why plenty of Nier fans were understandably bamboozled by an announcement on X about an upcoming Nier project:
【NieR 新プロジェクト 制作血定】虚無に生まれるは、希望か。それとも、救済という名の絶望か。━━━Coming Soon…… pic.twitter.com/nBdtqQEF12March 31, 2026
The video boasts a “Coming Soon” title screen for Nier: Cosmic Horror, a game that would apparently be featuring a deeply caked-up robot with a tentacle for a head. Bizarre imagery, sure, but this is Yoko Taro we’re talking about, the man who wears a moon for a face. I’ve no doubt that if a new Nier game came out about tentacle robots with perfectly spherical rumps, it’d spend 50 hours both justifying that and making you cry about it.
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Anyway, turns out it was all an April Fool’s bit, per the Nier X account: “The ‘Nier: COSMIC HORROR’ announced at 0:00 today is an April Fool’s project. We received a tremendous response and caused quite a stir. We look forward to your continued support for the Nier series.”
Fans aren’t taking it great—there’s a spray of crying gifs in the post’s comments, interspersed with the occasional .png of Wolverine telling Yoko to, er, experience intercourse with himself. And hey, look—it’s easy to give a smug little chuckle and say ‘you fools, it’s April 1st!’ but, to take the side of the fooled here:
This is a beloved series without a proper, non-mobile entry in almost a decade, with a brimming fanbase, who just recently got told the series itself would return. Looking at the post, it’s obviously a bit low-budget for an announcement, but the robot design being weird is the furthest thing from a clear-cut joke because again, I say, this is Yoko.
In other words this is one of those annoying April Fools jokes that is just believable enough to make you double-take, hence the existence of this article. It is my grim duty to cut off your supply of copium, and for that I am very sorry.
Anyway—there’s still likely a Nier project in the works, but it isn’t Nier: Cosmic Horror. Maybe the robot design’ll pop up in whatever’s in progress over at Square Enix, but as for now, those steel cakes were a lie.
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