Spiritual predecessor

Games by the same staff

• Yooka-Laylee is a spiritual successor evoking the style and gameplay of Rare's Banjo-Kazooie. It was developed by Playtonic Games, which consisted of many former Rare staff members, including programmer Chris Sutherland and composer Grant Kirkhope. Yooka and Laylee, the game's animal protagonists, serve as stand-ins for the original game's Banjo and Kazooie.
• Mighty No. 9 closely resembles the gameplay and character design of the Mega Man series, which project lead Keiji Inafune worked on before leaving Capcom, and is considered a spiritual successor.
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is considered a spiritual successor to the Castlevania series, created by Koji Igarashi who had led development of several Castlevania games before leaving Konami.
• A number of games from Bullfrog Productions have spawned spiritual successors in the years after the studio was closed by Electronic Arts in 2001, with these projects typically led by former staff from Bullfrog having found their own studios. These include Godus by Peter Molyneux's studio 22cans, succeeding Populous; 5 Lives Studios' Satellite Reign, succeeding Syndicate Wars; and Two Point Hospital by Mark Webley and Gary Carr's Two Point Studios, succeeding Theme Hospital.
• P.N.03 has been called the spiritual predecessor of Bayonetta for its "combat...with stylish dance-inspired movements" and "flashy, energetic, intense" gameplay and character design. P.N.03 director Shinji Mikami later co-founded PlatinumGames, the studio that developed Bayonetta, and Bayonetta director and PlatinumGames co-founder Hideki Kamiya also directed Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry, and Viewtiful Joe, the last of which was part of the Capcom Five with P.N.03.
• The upcoming game Physint, set to be directed by Hideo Kojima, has been envisioned as the spiritual successor to the Metal Gear series (published by Konami and directed and produced by Kojima until his departure from the studio in 2015) as a return to the 'tactical-espionage' genre.
• In December 2025, Lucasfilm Games announced Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, an action role-playing game described as a spiritual successor to the 2003 role-playing game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and helmed by Casey Hudson, who directed the aforementioned game as well as the original Mass Effect trilogy during his time at BioWare.