Is BloodMasque Square Enix's New Horror Franchise?

Square Enix may be planning a new game franchise. Over the past week, the company has been quietly scooping up rights to the title "BloodMasque".

The folks at Fusible noticed that Square Enix registered two domain names, BloodMasque.com and BloodMasque.net. The filings were made on January 29th. Fusible speculates that "Blood Masque" will involve vampires in some way.

Poking around at the US Patent & Trademark Office's website, we found that they had trademarked "BloodMasque" on that same day. The trademark filing isn't just limited to games. Instead, it also applies to cartoons, card games, mouse pads and more. Still, games are mentioned multiple times throughout the filing so it seems likely that this is first and foremost a video game.

"BloodMasque" does sound like the name of a horror game. Assuming that it's vampires might be going too far. Still, everyone's chasing those Twilight dollars so it's not a bad guess.

Usually, when we notice a trademark filing like this, we look back at a company's history to get a sense of what their upcoming game could be. However, BloodMasque could really be anything. Consoles, browsers, mobile phones, PC - Square Enix makes games for multiple genres on those platforms. The company's not willing to supply any hints about the game, either.

"Unfortunately we are unable to make a comment," Square Enix told Game Informer this week.

Guess we'll just have to wait for Square Enix to make an announcement.