Crash Bandicoot 5 was reportedly in the works, but one former Toys For Bob dev says it's been canned: "It's gonna break hearts"

Sorry, Crash Bandicoot fans, it seems like a fifth game was in the works, but was cancelled somewhere along the line.

It's been a bit of a weird time for everyone's favourite bandicoot in recent years. He had something of a revival back in 2017, when the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy brought the classic PS1 character back to the forefront, finding success with a new, young audience too. This later led to a remake of Crash Team Racing in 2019, and of course a year later there was Toys for Bob's sequel to the original trilogy, Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time. Since then, though, things have been a bit quieter. Last year did see the arrival of Crash Team Rumble, a live service game that was ultimately not very successful, its last content update arriving in March this year. But there's always been the question of whether there'll be a Crash 5 or not. And the answer, as it seemingly turns out, is that there was one in development - but not any more.

This is according to Nicholas Kole, a character artist that worked on games like the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, and notably, Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time. Sadly, the game Kole was working on up until recently, codenamed Project Dragon, was cancelled, and of course this led some fans to wonder if this was at all related to that purple dragon Spyro. Kole clarified that no, Project Dragon wasn't a new Spyro (later sharing art which revealed it to be a Minecraft-inspired fantasy game that honestly looks quite lovely). However, Kole did note in the tweet debunking it being a Spyro game that "some day folks will hear about the Crash 5 that never was and it’s gonna break hearts."

There's never been any official announcement regarding Crash 5, and Kole is no longer at Toys for Bob, so take it with a pinch of salt just to be on the safe side. The Crash 4 developer did go solo earlier this year, now taking the world of game making on as an independent studio - though it has signed a deal with Microsoft for its next game (which many fans are hoping is a new Spyro title, unsurprisingly). For now, we'll just have to wait and see if anyone is able to share more about this Schrodinger's Crash 5 somewhere down the line.