Namco High studio ShiftyLook is shutting its doors

Namco Bandai subsidiary ShiftyLook is shutting its doors three years after its launch in 2011, the cross-media studio announced.

The closure of the company, best known for its work on projects Namco High and Bravoman: Binja Bash, will coincide with the end of a number of titles over the coming months as game servers begin to shut down.

"We originally got the ShiftyLook project going at NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc. back in Fall 2011," reads a statement from the company. "The idea was to take the unused, "sleeping" video game characters of our past and bring them back first with webcomics, and then - once they had gotten enough traction - expand into other media like web animation, games, and merchandise.

"I'm happy to say that we've done this with Wonder Momo, Bravoman, and some other very cool characters, which are now beloved not just in gamer circles, but at conventions, art groups, and many, many places we'd never expect. That said, now that we have successfully revived so many franchises, the heavy lifting is completed - and so is our work. We battled the video games abyss and won, which means it's time for us to move on and let the hit-makers play with some new toys."

Mobile release Bravoman will continue to be available on the App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore until March 30, with in-app purchases available until March 16. Likewise, Namco High will see its servers officially shut down on June 30.

ShiftyLook still plans to follow through on the release of its Wonder Momo video game for select digital download platforms as scheduled, however. Wonder Momo was first announced in January following the release of a teaser site. The Momo franchise, which originally released in Japanese arcades in 1987, has never been available outside of Japan.

The company was founded with plans to revitalize forgotten Namco franchises through webcomics, webtoons, anime, playable games, music and graphic novels.