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Cliff Bleszinski shares design docs and concept art for canned Panic Garden game idea

Bleszinski claimed he was offered a chance to make Panic Garden happen, but ultimately turned down the opportunity.

TJ Denzer

February 18, 2025 8:20 AM

Image via Cliff Bleszinski

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Former Epic Games dev and Boss Key Productions lead Cliff Bleszinski may be mostly retired from gaming, but that doesn’t keep him from dabbling in creativity related to the medium. This week, Bleszinski shared a peek at art and sketches he had been working on for a game concept he called Panic Garden that included logos, characters, locations, enemies, weapons, and more.

Cliff Bleszinski shared the assets of his Panic Garden game idea via his social media this week. Bleszinski described the core game idea as “Left 4 Dead meets Plants Vs. Zombies,” and so you’ve got a lot of lawn equipment such as souped up chainsaws and lawnmowers as weaponry, as well as all sorts of vegetation that looks pretty grumpy and destroyable with those implements. Cliff shares that he used AI image generation programs such as Midjourney and Grok to help with concepts of some of the ideas.

SO I have this game idea that I've been iterating on a LOT last couple of years.

Had a chance to make it happen and after soul searching decided against it.

But I thought I'd share. LOT in here.

Used AI art to get the idea across (Midjourney/Grok.)https://t.co/lMQCbUmRNW

— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) February 17, 2025

Ultimately, Panic Garden is an idea that will remain in Bleszinski’s mind and the folder of art and concepts he shared. Bleszinski claims to have been made an offer to create Panic Garden, but he ultimately turned the offer down. The former head of Boss Key hasn’t been active in gaming for quite a while, though he did share a LawBreakers fan project that made the game playable online again. He’s also engaged in other creative pursuits such as working on an original comic book in 2023.

It's interesting to see what could have been, not to mention seeing Cliff Bleszinski dabbling in game conception after so many years out of the industry. It looks like Bleszinski doesn’t have plans to come back at this time, but stay tuned to Shacknews for further updates.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on BlueSky @JohnnyChugs.