Tomb Raider, known as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider from 1996 to 2008, is a media franchise that originated with an action-adventure video game series created by British developer Core Design. The franchise is currently owned by Embracer Group and operated by CDE Entertainment; it was formerly owned by Eidos Interactive, then by Square Enix Europe after Square Enix's acquisition of Eidos in 2009 until Embracer Group purchased the intellectual property alongside Eidos in 2022. The franchise focuses on the fictional British archaeologist Lara Croft, who travels around the world searching for lost artefacts and infiltrating dangerous tombs and ruins. Gameplay generally focuses on exploration, solving puzzles, navigating hostile environments filled with traps, and fighting enemies. Additional media has been developed for the franchise in the form of film adaptations, comics and novels.
Development of the first Tomb Raider video game began in 1994; it was released two years later. Its critical and commercial success prompted Core Design to develop a new game annually for the next four years, which put a strain on staff. The sixth game, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, faced difficulties during development and was considered a failure at release. This prompted Eidos to switch development duties to Crystal Dynamics, which has been the series' primary developer since. Other developers have contributed to spin-off titles and ports of mainline entries.
The Tomb Raider series had sold over 100 million units worldwide by 2024, while the entire franchise generated close to $1.2 billion in revenue by 2002. The series has received generally positive reviews from critics, and Lara Croft became one of the most recognisable video game characters, winning accolades and earning places on the Walk of Game and Guinness World Records.
Titles
thumb|right|55 Ashbourne Road in [[Derby, where Core Design developed Tomb Raider from 1994 to 2006]]
The first six Tomb Raider games were developed by Core Design, a British video game development company owned by Eidos Interactive. After the sixth game in the series was released to a mixed reception in 2003, development was transferred to American studio Crystal Dynamics, who have handled the main series since. was released worldwide on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows in 2018. An arcade game based on this incarnation was released by Bandai Namco Amusement in Europe in 2018. An entry for mobile devices, an endless runner platformer titled Lara Croft: Relic Run, was released in 2015. A Tomb Raider themed downloadable content expansion for PowerWash Simulator was released for free on 31 January 2023.
Cancelled games
The plans for the franchise following the release of Tomb Raider II in 1997 were heavily revised. Initially, an expansion disk was planned for II entitled The Further Adventures of Lara Croft, which would have been set in India. Some engineering work was conducted for the PlayStation version to allow for a disk swap after launching the base game. A segment from issue 64 of GamesMaster informally referred to the expansion as Tomb Raider 2.5 and stated that it would have seven levels. A full sequel, then billed as Tomb Raider III was planned to have a two-year development period and release on the PlayStation 2. This game would have had a remote island setting and a focus on survival, including a need to find food and water. Core Design developer Gavin Rummery has stated that the island setting would not have resembled the 2013 reboot, but rather have been "self-contained". Eidos was initially behind the plan but intended to maintain an annual release schedule, and therefore brought in a new team to handle The Further Adventures of Lara Croft. Rummery objected on the grounds that splitting Tomb Raider out across multiple teams could lead to conflict between the projects, and has stated that it led him to "eventually throw in the towel." Eidos pursued annual releases with the new team. The India setting from the expansion disk was adopted for Tomb Raider III, a sequel for the original PlayStation, and the PlayStation 2 title was dropped. Rummery credits the failure of The Angel of Darkness in 2003 to burnout of the second team from annual releases, which stemmed from those directional changes in the late 1990s. The details were ultimately revealed by interviews with former staffers conducted for The Making of Tomb Raider in 2021. Eidos requested the project's cancellation. It was suggested by staff that Eidos did not want to let outside developers handle the franchise.
In the mid-2000's TT Games produced a test animation of Lara Croft as a Lego minifigure. The studio felt the Tomb Raider series wasn’t big enough for a standalone game, so the idea was pitched to Lucasfilm as a potential crossover with Indiana Jones. The pitch was immediately rejected, as Lucasfilm disliked the Tomb Raider series and believed it to be a knockoff of Indiana Jones.
Common elements
Lara Croft
alt=A computer generated image of a brown haired woman whose body faces to the right while her head is turned down towards the ground, and left hand is placed on her wounded shoulder. She wears a dirty white shirt, ripped green pants and black boots. She has several abrasions covered by cloth. The woman holds a bow in her right hand.|thumb|Various incarnations of Lara Croft in the video game series. Despite multiple revisions to her clothing and general physique, her face and hair have remained generally consistent. of the video game franchise for [[Amazon Studios|Amazon. It was also reported that this would involve a tie-in video game and film in an interconnected universe, likened to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The series will star Sophie Turner as Croft.
Continuity
The circumstances of her first adventures, along with the drive behind her adventures, differ depending on the continuity. In the original continuities, she is on a plane that crashes in the Himalayas: her journey back to civilization against the odds help to begin her journey towards her adult life as an adventuress and treasure hunter. One of the people involved in its creation was Toby Gard, who was mostly responsible for creating the character of Lara Croft. Gard originally envisioned the character as a man: company co-founder Jeremy Heath-Smith was worried the character would be seen as derivative of Indiana Jones, so Gard changed the character's gender. Her design underwent multiple revisions and redrafts during early development. The vision for the franchise in late 1997 involved an expansion pack for Tomb Raider II, entitled The Further Adventures of Lara Croft, followed by a survival game called Tomb Raider III to be released two or three years later for the PlayStation 2. Eidos were initially behind this direction, but later were driven by a desire to have annual releases for the Christmas window. This led them to request that a second team be created to develop an expanded version of The Further Adventures and release that as Tomb Raider III in the interim. The decision was not communicated to the original team, which learned of the move only when Tomb Raider III was publicly announced as a 1998 title for the original PlayStation. They were exhausted and withdrew from the PlayStation 2 project in response, which was soon cancelled. The Tomb Raider II team did not work on the franchise again, with some team members going on to work on Project Eden. For this reason, and the feeling that they had exhausted the series' potential, the team tried to kill off Lara at the end of the fourth game, The Last Revelation. Eidos insisted that the series continue, The game was poorly received, with reviewers suggesting the series was growing stale. During this period, multiple handheld titles were developed by both Core Design and third-party developers.
Crystal Dynamics and Legend trilogy (2003–2008)
After the critical backlash against The Angel of Darkness, Eidos decided to take production of the Tomb Raider series out of Core Design's hands and give it to another subsidiary studio. Production of the next game was given to Crystal Dynamics in 2003, a studio that had made its name with the Legacy of Kain series. After Legend was finished, the team decided to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the series by remaking the original game, rebuilding the environments and redesigning the story to fit in with the events and gameplay of Legend. A sequel, eventually revealed as Rise of the Tomb Raider, started development a few months after the reboot's release. Shadow was developed by Eidos-Montréal as Crystal Dynamics completed Marvel's Avengers, though Crystal would provide secondary support. The game concluded Lara's origin story. A "Definitive Edition", featuring all 7 DLCs for Shadow was released in November 2019.
Following the conclusion of the Survivor trilogy, both Crystal Dynamics and Eidos-Montréal were busy with Marvel properties, and so there were no further Tomb Raider games for several years. In Crystal Dynamics' case, continued support for Marvel's Avengers lasted until 2023. A great many crossovers with other video game franchises were also developed beginning in 2014 and continuing into the early 2020s, with an article from Fandom Wire identifying 14 franchises that received crossovers, ranging from Fall Guys to Dead by Daylight. These were generally in the form of cosmetic additions or through Lara appearing as a playable character.
Embracer Group acquisition and re-releases (2022–present)
Embracer Group purchased a number of Square Enix Europe assets in May 2022 for , including Crystal Dynamics and the Tomb Raider franchise. The sale was for a comparatively low price, and was intended to fund Square Enix's disastrous pivot to NFT games in the early 2020s. Crystal Dynamics had previously announced the next main Tomb Raider title in 2021 as a game that would "unify the timelines", and combine elements from all three series, including the work of Core Design. In this timeline, Lara would be a seasoned adventurer. This instalment will use Unreal Engine 5, and will be published by Amazon Games. The mobile game Tomb Raider Reloaded was published by Square Enix London Mobile in 2023. The IP is held by Middle-earth Enterprises, a subdivision of Embracer.
The period also saw a number of re-releases in the form of collected editions and remasters. Feral Interactive's Lara Croft spin-offs were re-released as The Lara Croft Collection for Nintendo Switch in 2023. Aspyr released remasters of all six Core Design titles across two collections as Tomb Raider I–III Remastered and Tomb Raider IV–VI Remastered in 2024 and 2025, respectively. The remasters were made available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The Core Design games were also re-released in their original form for Evercade across two cartridges, with Tomb Raider Collection 1 covering the first three games, and Tomb Raider Collection 2 covering the fourth and fifth. The Evercade re-releases did not include The Angel of Darkness.
On December 11, 2025, during the Game Awards, two new separate entries were announced: Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Tomb Raider: Catalyst, set for release in 2026 and 2027, respectively. Legacy of Atlantis is a remake of the original 1996 game developed by the Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, with modern game mechanics and graphics; while Catalyst is set in Northern India and follows Lara after a cataclysm reveals ancient secrets and the forces protecting them, while rival Treasure Hunters descend on the region. Both games will utilize Unreal Engine 5 and will use Alix Wilton Regan as the voice actress for Lara Croft. Catalyst is set "years after the events of Underworld" and treats the Survivor trilogy as Croft's origin story.
Films and television
There were initially two film adaptations made in the early 2000s that starred Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 2001 and its sequel, The Cradle of Life, in 2003. While both films were financially successful, neither of them were well received by critics. A reboot starring Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft was released in 2018, which was better received. A sequel of the 2018 film was in development with Vikander returning as Croft but it was later canceled with the film rights reverted to the game company and prompted a bidding war among studios. In January 2023, MGM sister company Amazon Studios (now known as Amazon MGM Studios) secured the rights to a new Tomb Raider reboot film, with Dmitri M. Johnson and his company dj2 Entertainment attached to produce. The film was intended to be interconnected with a television series from Phoebe Waller-Bridge and a video game from Crystal Dynamics, forming a Tomb Raider shared universe and franchise.
In 2007, an animated series based on Lara Croft titled Revisioned: Tomb Raider was produced and broadcast by GameTap as part of a series of re-imaginings of popular video game series. The series voiced by Minnie Driver ran between May and June 2007. Multiple noted animators and writers were involved with the series, including Peter Chung, Warren Ellis, Gail Simone and Jim Lee. While the production team had great creative freedom, they were given a basic guideline for the character by the developers so that Lara would not do anything out of character.
In 2021, Legendary Television announced an animated television series titled Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft that is set after the events of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The first season was released in October 2024 on Netflix and the second and final season was released in December 2025.
Originally announced in May 2024, a live-action television series is currently in production at Amazon MGM Studios. Phoebe Waller-Bridge serves as the creator, writer, executive producer, and co-showrunner of the series alongside Chad Hodge Sophie Turner was confirmed to portray Lara Croft in September 2025 with Sigourney Weaver, Martin Bobb-Semple, Jason Isaacs, Bill Paterson, Jack Bannon, John Heffernan, Celia Imrie, Paterson Joseph, Sasha Luss, Juliette Motamed, and August Wittgenstein joining the cast in January 2026.
Music
The original Tomb Raider theme was composed by Nathan McCree. He created the original theme music after having discussions with Gard about the character of Lara Croft. Having decided to use Classical English music as an inspiration, he decided to create something simple for the theme song. Its simplicity made rearrangements and orchestrations easy. For his work on the first three Tomb Raider games, he was given fairly minimal briefs, and for Tomb Raider III he was working on the game as a freelancer as he had left the company.
Tomb Raider Engine (1994–2000)
The first Tomb Raider used a custom-built game engine, as other equivalent engines available to Core Design at the time were not versatile enough to realise the team's vision. The engine was designed by Paul Douglas, who handled the game's artificial intelligence (AI) and the three-dimensional (3D) graphics. The choice of a 3D game was influenced by the team's opinion that the game type was under-represented when compared to first-person shooters such as Doom. Its 3D style meant multiple elements were difficult to implement, including the AI and camera control. Another noted aspect was the multi-layered levels, as compared to equivalent 3D action-adventure games of the time which were limited to a flat-floor system. Lara's movements were hand-animated and coordinated rather than created using motion capture. The reason for this was that the team wanted uniformity in her movement, which was not possible with motion capture technology of the time. Lara's hair movements were made more realistic using TressFX in Tomb Raider and PureHair in Rise of the Tomb Raider.
Cultural impact
Both the character of Lara Croft and the concepts behind the Tomb Raider franchise have evolved thematically and in popularity since the first game's release in 1996.
Tomb Raider nude code
Following the release of the first 1996 Tomb Raider video game there were online rumors about a Tomb Raider Nude Code, an internet online urban legend that the programmers of the Tomb Raider video game series had added a special nude cheat code that would turn the game's heroine, Lara Croft, completely naked during gameplay.
Reception
Upon release, Tomb Raider became an unexpected success, reaching the top of sales charts and remaining for a time. It went on to sell over 7 million units worldwide. The 2013 reboot sold 11 million units, becoming the most commercially successful Tomb Raider title to date. In addition to the games' success, the 2001 film adaptation grossed $275 million, making it the highest-grossing video game adaptation until being overtaken in 2010 by Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. and the 2001 film adaptation had the biggest opening weekend (US$47.7m) for an action film with a female lead since Aliens in 1986. In 2020, Tomb Raider featured on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail to celebrate classic UK video games.
The character of Lara Croft has similarly enjoyed popularity, standing out during her initial appearance in the male-dominated video game market, and continuing to stand out throughout the series' history.
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