Kena: Scars of Kosmora slips to 2027 as Ember Lab opens up its island
Ember Lab has moved Kena: Scars of Kosmora into 2027, saying the follow-up to Bridge of Spirits needs more time to reach the scope it is aiming for.
Kena: Scars of Kosmora will not arrive this year. In a PlayStation Blog post published on 1 October, Ember Lab said it is pushing the sequel to Kena: Bridge of Spirits into 2027, buying time to polish a game it describes as broader and deeper than its 2021 debut.
Why the studio is taking longer
The announcement trailer landed in February. Since then the team says it has been “heads down bringing Kena: Scars of Kosmora to the finish line”, and the extra time is about matching the standard of Bridge of Spirits “at a much bigger scale”. Ember Lab is unusually direct that this is a choice rather than a fault found late: the delay “gives us the ability to really polish the expanded game experience we want to deliver”.
A larger island to explore
Structurally it stays a character-focused linear adventure, with more room to wander for anyone who leaves the main path. The story follows Kena, a Spirit Guide who works as part warrior and part healer, against a Corruption that takes the unresolved pain of the dead and turns it into something that infects the world around them.
Her childhood friend Orfio believes the island of Kosmora holds the answers they have both been looking for. Its ancient Spirit Guides built their practice around four elements and the Alchemystic Temples, and four interconnected cultures once thrived there, each steered by a guiding Element, until a mysterious cataclysm destroyed one of them. Those temples return as dungeon-style challenges, and clearing them pays out upgrades that push the adventure forward.
A companion that changes how Kena moves
Kena also has a new way across the island. A crystalline canine spirit serves as a mount, fights alongside her both mounted and on foot, and plays a role in the Alchemystic puzzles. Ember Lab ties the creature directly to the origin of Kosmora itself, which is the neat part of the design: the thing that makes the map faster to cross is also part of the mystery the map is asking you to solve.
When and where it lands
Kena: Scars of Kosmora is due in 2027 on PlayStation 5 in physical and digital form, and on PC as a digital release. Ember Lab has not narrowed the window any further than the year.
Our opinion
A 2027 window is the least surprising line in the post, and that is the point. Ember Lab shipped Bridge of Spirits as a small, confident game and is now spending extra years on the harder problem of scale, which is the classic place where charming studios lose the thing that made them worth watching. Kosmora's structure is the encouraging part: temples as dungeons, four living cultures with a missing fifth, and a mount that is also a puzzle tool read like a studio testing its gentle, animation-first style against a bigger map rather than simply padding one out. If the extra time buys that, the wait is cheap. If it only buys length, the charm is what is at risk.