LUDENS X: Anicorn’s Darkest Take Yet on Kojima Productions’ Mascot

Anicorn built its collaboration reputation on translating other people’s visual languages onto a wrist. NASA, PlayStation, SEGA, Daniel Arsham: the pattern has always been the same, take an instantly recognizable identity and rebuild the case, dial, and bracelet around it rather than just slapping a logo on a stock movement. The 2023 Space Ludens watch, made with Kojima Productions and touching NASA branding as well, was the clearest proof of that approach. It leaned on the astronaut-in-a-digital-void reading of Ludens, the Kojima Productions mascot, and gave it a silver, exploratory finish that matched the character’s origin story.

LUDENS X does not repeat that formula. It takes the same case architecture from Space Ludens and pushes it somewhere colder and more mechanical: black case, dark technical dial, gold-tone hardware. Anicorn is calling it a darker, sharper, more cinematic expression of the same character, and the timing is not incidental. KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS turns ten this year, and LUDENS X is built as the anniversary piece.

Understanding what LUDENS X is actually referencing, though, takes more than knowing it is a Kojima Productions collaboration.

Ludens Isn’t a Death Stranding Character, It’s the Studio’s Own Icon

The most common assumption about Ludens is that it is a character from Death Stranding. It isn’t. Ludens is Kojima Productions’ company mascot, a figure designed by Yoji Shinkawa to represent the studio itself rather than to appear in any of its games. It never shows up on screen in Death Stranding; it exists on the studio’s logo, its flag, and now on Anicorn’s watch.

The design is built around an extra-vehicular creative activity suit, Kojima’s own coinage for a spacesuit reimagined as a tool for creative work rather than survival. Shinkawa gave its surface a Turing pattern, the biological growth pattern named after Alan Turing, as a deliberate nod to the mathematician who helped define computing itself. The name Ludens comes from Homo Ludens, a term coined by historian Johan Huizinga to describe humanity defined by play rather than by labor or reason, and it runs directly through Kojima Productions’ founding tagline, “From Sapiens to Ludens.” The studio was established on December 16, 2015, and its debut title, Death Stranding, released on November 8, 2019, went on to earn Kojima the BAFTA Fellowship in 2020, the organization’s highest individual honor.

There is one more layer worth knowing. The face under Ludens’ mask was digitally scanned from Kojima himself, but he has been explicit that the mask isn’t meant to represent him specifically. Asked about the character’s identity, he said it is meant to be everyone: the users, each person who puts it on. That framing is why Anicorn’s collaborations with the character, first Space Ludens and now LUDENS X, read less like game merchandise and more like officially sanctioned pieces of a studio’s own internal mythology, translated into a wearable object for its 10th anniversary.

The 39mm by 49mm by 12.7mm case is not a round dial in the usual sense. Its L x W dimensions and four exposed corner screws are lifted directly from the Ludens EVA Creative Suit, the character’s signature outfit, and Anicorn is framing the whole watch as that suit shrunk down to fit an arm. The bezel carries two engraved phrases, “BEYOND THE STRAND” and “INTO OUTER SPACE,” which read as a fairly literal summary of Ludens’ arc from Death Stranding’s connective themes toward the studio’s next, still largely unannounced direction.

Shinkawa designed the dial himself, and it shows in the layering: a 10th anniversary mark, the Kojima Productions identity, and Ludens graphic details are stacked over a brushed metallic panel meant to echo internal machinery.

Two Straps Do Two Different Jobs

The set ships with a black stainless steel bracelet and a carbon fiber pattern leather strap, and the split is a practical one rather than just variety for its own sake. The steel bracelet keeps the mecha, space-armor read of the design intact for anyone wearing this as a statement piece. The leather strap is the concession to actually wearing it day to day, since a 12.7mm-thick asymmetric steel case is not the lightest thing to carry on a bracelet through a full shift.

Sapphire crystal and 50 meters of water resistance round out a spec sheet that is honest about what this watch is for. It is not pitched as a tool watch, and Anicorn is not pretending otherwise. The NH35-ATD is a known, serviceable Seiko-derived movement, reliable rather than remarkable, which is the right call: nobody buying a $940 collaboration piece built around a video game studio’s mascot is buying it for chronometric ambition.

The Collectibles Are Doing as Much Work as the Watch

Beyond the LUDENS X Watch Set at $940, Anicorn is releasing a standalone LUDENS Cuff Bracelet at $65 and a Ludens Character Metal Print at $48. The cuff repeats the black steel set’s engraved details in a silver-only standalone version, giving buyers who skip the watch a cheaper way into the same visual world. The metal print is a 172mm by 240mm stainless steel poster with a magnetic mount, built for a desk or shelf rather than a wrist, and every watch set also comes with a numbered metal warranty card in a sealed case, positioning the whole release closer to a collector’s drop than a standard product launch.

Most limited-edition watch drops lean on a stated production cap: 500 pieces, 1,000 pieces, a number printed on the caseback that buyers can point to later. LUDENS X skips that model. There is no fixed production quantity for this release. Instead, the LUDENS X Watch Set is being sold through a time-limited pre-order window, and Anicorn will produce according to the orders it actually receives before that window closes.

That is a meaningfully different kind of scarcity, and it is worth being precise about what it does and doesn’t guarantee. It doesn’t promise a hard cap the way a numbered edition of 500 does, someone ordering unit 480 has no way of knowing whether the run stops at 500 or 5,000.

Specs, Pricing & Availability

This is not a watch for someone building a rotation of daily wearers, and Anicorn has never pretended its collaboration pieces are. It is for Kojima Productions collectors who already own Death Stranding merchandise or the original Space Ludens piece and want the darker anniversary companion to sit next to it. Judged purely as a themed collectible, the design commitment here is real: the case shape, the engraved bezel text, and the exhibition caseback all tie back to the EVA suit concept rather than existing as decoration bolted onto a generic case.

Where I would pump the brakes is on the movement and the asymmetric case shape working against each other for daily wear. A modified NH35-ATD in an exhibition caseback is fine at this price, but the 49mm width means this sits closer to a piece of desk art you occasionally wear than a watch that disappears under a cuff. If that is the appeal, LUDENS X delivers on it cleanly. If you want the anniversary tie-in without the commitment, the $65 cuff or the $48 print get you the same mythology for a fraction of the cost.

None of that changes what actually justifies the $940, which is not the movement or even the water resistance rating. It is the specificity of the design, the fact that this exact case, dial, and cuff pairing exists nowhere else, and a production model that closes the door the moment the pre-order window does. Buy it for the object and the license, not for the caliber.

Launch is exclusive to anicorn-watches.com, opening 10PM EDT on August 5, 2026 in New York, which lands at 10AM HKT and 11AM JST on August 6 for Hong Kong and Tokyo buyers.