Citadel Studios has announced its existence as a new indie developer with a mission to build "the next generation of multiplayer sandbox role-playing games". The new indie outfit is co-founded by Chris Ondrus -- a veteran of AAA RPG stables BioWare, Mythic and Bethesda Softworks -- Derek Brinkmann -- who worked on Ultima Online at EA, before a tenur at Mythic, and fellow EA veteran Designer Tim Cotten.

Citadel Studios is dedicated to building next-generation sandbox games inspired by legends like Ultima, EVE Online, and Minecraft.

We believe in fostering rich communities and giving power to our players in an effort to make our worlds live and breathe. Not only will you be able to change your surroundings, but the very of the nature of the game changes with you.

As the above mission statement would suggests, Citadel's first project is planned as a sanbox role-playing game tentatively titled Shards, which IGN has managed to gleam a little more info on.

Shards is pitched as "a truly next-generation online game that will enable players to customize their experience, and change the face of player collaboration forever." It's still in early production, with Citadel having spent just six months on the game. Citadel will be "ignoring the modern online gaming imperative to squeeze every last cent from every player."

A teaser trailer for Shards doesn't offer much more.