An ambitious and celebrated fan project based on the cult franchise Bionicle has now been pulled by Lego – but the team is continuing.
Three years ago, we reported on a long-awaited fan project that aimed to transform the popular Bionicle figures from the early 2000s into a modern open-world role-playing game. A playable demo was supposed to be released this year, but that will no longer happen, as the rights holder Lego has decided to scrap the game. But it’s not completely over yet.
Attempts were made to comply with Lego’s guidelines
What kind of game is it? The project was called Bionicle: Masks of Power and was supposed to be available for fans to download for free. The action role-playing game follows the story of the Toa, who set out to find the Masks of Power to free the island of Mata Nui from the evil Makuta.
Masks of Power was developed in Unreal Engine 5 and wanted to send you into an open world modeled after the lore of Bionicle with six different Toa.
Lego steps in: Lego still owns the rights to Bionicle, even though the franchise has been dormant for many years. However, Masks of Power apparently became too big for the Danish toy manufacturer, and Lego asked the development team to discontinue production. Naturally, they complied.
Unmasked Games has issued a public statement on Steam saying that the demo is theoreticallyin its final stages and only a few bug fixes and final touches areleft to complete it. It was originally scheduled to be released as a shadow drop on August 10, 2025.
To acknowledge the hard work that has gone into the game, a complete walkthrough of the demo in its current state has been released as a two-hour video on YouTube.
Precautions were taken: Unmasked Games goes on to write that every effort was made to comply with Lego’s fair play guidelines No money was ever requested, and there were numerous indications that Masks of Power was a fan project. Unfortunately, the Lego Group’s attitude toward fan-created media seems to have changed.
Although the team never received an explanation for Lego’s decision, they suspect that it could have been easily confused with an official project.
At the time of writing, the Steam page for Bionicle: Masks of Power appears among the top results when searching for Bionicle game
on Google. An average person seeing our game for the first time could easily think it was an official game – and no amount of clear disclaimers or disclaimers on our part could change that impression.
Bionicle fans don’t have to throw in the towel just yet, though. Another promising fan project is currently in the works that could fulfill all of our editor Fabiano’s childhood dreams.
For Unmasked Games, the journey is just beginning
Until Bionicle: Masks of Power was discontinued, the developers were known as Team Kanohi. The group is now using its experience and achievements to create a new game with its own IP. This was followed not only by a name change, but also by the conversion of the Steam page for Masks of Power to a new project.
There you will now find the upcoming game Project Rustbound. The attached images are still from the Bionicle project. It can therefore be assumed that development is not starting from scratch. Perhaps there will even be a spiritual successor to Bionicle. It remains exciting!
Things are also moving forward at Lego. After the toy manufacturer posted record profits again in 2024, the company now wants to invest more heavily in the video game market.
