This month’s arrival of Kingdom Hearts Unchained X might have been a shock for fans who don’t keep tabs on the Japanese gaming scene, after the game debuted on iOS and Android instead of a traditional console or handheld gaming device. The news was a bit less shocking for those who knew KHUX is an adaptation of Kingdom Hearts X, a browser-based game with loose connections to Kingdom Hearts 3. But many Kingdom Hearts fans still have questions about what the arrival of Kingdom Hearts Unchained X means for the future of Disney and Square Enix's crossover series.
We had an opportunity to speak with Kingdom Hearts Unchained X producer Hironori Okayama, whose previous work includes Star Galaxy and Mobius Final Fantasy , about releasing a mobile Kingdom Hearts title and what we might see from KHUX down the road. We couldn’t discuss the game’s story or connection to the major Kingdom Hearts titles, since Okayama prefers to leave those questions to Tetsuya Nomura ; however, the Kingdom Hearts Unchained X still had plenty to say about the mobile title’s past, present and future. Unsurprisingly, bringing the franchise to mobile platforms was primarily a business decision, one made in response to changing markets and the rise of touchscreen devices like tablets and smartphones.
“Looking at worldwide users, there’s a lot of people that have smartphones,” Okayama said. “Even people that have never played Kingdom Hearts before…they usually always have a smartphone.”
That second bit is especially important to Square Enix. Kingdom Hearts isn’t exactly hurting for dedicated fans —in fact, there’s a book about KH2 being Kickstarted right now —but that doesn’t mean the company wouldn’t like to see that fandom grow. Consoles are falling out of favor with some younger gamers, and now is arguably the perfect time for Square Enix to see if Kingdom Hearts has any appeal outside of the spaces it’s inhabited for the last decade. It also turns out PC gamers weren’t particularly receptive to the eighth installment in the franchise.
“When we released the PC version, a lot of the people who were playing browser games were more into FPSs or other hardcore games, rather than these cute-style games. A lot of the users had already moved to a smartphone platform instead of a PC,” Okayama told iDigi. “That’s why we decided to release [ Kingdom Hearts X ] on mobile and make it a long-running game.”
Square Enix isn’t just trying to monetize existing content in a different market. While the links between Kingdom Hearts Unchained X and Kingdom Hearts 3 are already well-documented, Okayama says the studio would like to tell additional stories in KHUX. The game includes 200 missions at the time of publication, 50 of which were just added in a recent patch, and Square Enix says it will continue to update Kingdom Hearts Unchained X on a weekly basis for however long the game attracts an audience.
Of course, while the convoluted narrative at the heart of the Kingdom Hearts franchise tends to dominate just about any conversation about the series, bringing the series to mobile platforms doesn’t just give Square Enix a chance to market Kingdom Hearts to a fresh audience. It also gives the company an opportunity to experiment with new gameplay mechanics.
“The game looks cute, very simple and easy with the 2D graphics,” Okayama said. “But I was very particular about creating the 1-Turn Triumph, where you try to defeat all enemies in one turn without seeing getting retaliated [against]. That really added a strategy or puzzle element to the game and that’s actually the deepest part of the game. I’d love for core users, and even new users, to try and defeat all their enemies in one turn.”
Earning a 1-Turn Triumph is never required but the mechanic does give players an incentive to revisit missions they’ve already completed. Kingdom Hearts Unchained X also rewards players who pull off a 1-Turn Triumph system with extra loot and experience at the end of the fight. Most importantly, as Okayama mentioned, it gives Square Enix a way to challenge the game’s biggest fans without arbitrarily boosting enemy stats to absurd levels or creating lengthy missions that test the limits of a player’s attention. It was important to the KHUX team that players feel like they can make meaningful accomplishments during short play sessions, and the 1-Turn Triumph system gives the option of depth without dragging out play time.
And it seems to be working. Square Enix hasn’t announced any firm numbers but Okayama says the team is happy with KHUX ’s early performance on touchscreen devices. Fans don’t seem to be upset about the change of format, or the fact that Kingdom Hearts Unchained X is set a century before the rest of the franchise. There are plenty of questions about the story, as is the case with any new KH release, but Okayama says most players’ biggest concern is whether or not their favorite character will show up in Kingdom Hearts Unchained X .
“The more core the fans are, the more they want to know more about the story or the more they want more characters to appear in the game,” said. “They say things like ‘I want that character in this game’ more than [they comment] on the gameplay or any other mechanical aspects of the game.”
Interestingly, when asked about the future of multiplayer in Kingdom Hearts Unchained X , the game’s producer acknowledged an interest in moving beyond the asynchronous multiplayer currently featured in the game. Recognizing that real-time multiplayer has become far more common in the mobile space, to the extent we even have touchscreen eSports now, Okayama said he’d love to see content in Kingdom Hearts Unchained X that players could complete together in real time. But the producer also acknowledged the many challenges of integrating live multiplayer into KHUX, saying it was much easier for him to express an interest than it was for coders to bring those ideas to life.
Similarly, while virtual reality will undoubtedly be the first thing many of us think of when looking back on 2016, don’t expect to see Square Enix announce Gear VR support for Kingdom Hearts Unchained X anytime soon. The game’s development team has plenty of VR fans, just like the rest of the gaming community, but the current round of VR headsets hadn’t even entered the mainstream consciousness when Square Enix first began work on the browser game that would eventually become Kingdom Hearts Unchained X. The game’s producer says he also needs to familiarize himself with the technology before trying to release a virtual reality game.
“If I was to create a game for VR, it would be better to take time to research a VR platform a bit more and see what kind of things I could do,” Okayama said, “When we created [Kingdom Hearts Unchained X], the technology for VR wasn’t really fleshed out yet…so we didn’t really have that in mind when creating it. As for the future, I can’t really say anything right now.”
Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com for more Kingdom Hearts Unchained X coverage throughout 2016 and for however long Square Enix supports Kingdom Hearts Unchained X in the months following launch.
