Level-5 have, it was revealed at their ‘Level-5 Vision 2016: New Heroes’ event, got an awful lot in development all at once. There’s not just new games in their existing catalogue of IPs, but brand new cross-media titles that span games, anime and manga.
Let’s start with the familiar, and Lady Layton: The Millionaire Ariadone’s Conspiracy is the latest in the Professor Layton series of puzzle games. It features Katrielle ‘Kat’ Layton as the lead character for the first time, as opposed to the Professor himself, with the game shifting from problem solving to solving mystery cases as a whole. Coming to Nintendo 3DS, iOS and Android, it’s set for a release in Sprin 2017 in Japan, with a Western release later in the year.
Here’s a Japanese trailer for the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9FspQMOBAA
There’s also a new game in their popular football RPG series, Inazuma Eleven Ares, which despite being the seventh game in the series takes place after the very first game in a parallel world story. This is out in Japan shortly after a new anime series in summer 2017, with a Western release some time thereafter.
Level-5’s fourth and fifth cross-media projects are The Snack World and Megaton Musashi. The Snack World is an odd one, with a blend of classic fantasy and modern conveniences like vending machines and cafes. That series gets going on iOS and Android in April, alongside a new anime, with a Japanese 3DS release in July 2017.
Megaton Musashi, meanwhile, blends robots with school mysteries, telling the story from multiple points of view across the different forms of media. There’s no release dates announced for this game, but fluent Japanese speakers can check out the pilot episode here.
The same can be said of the rest of the line up that Level-5 had at the event. Otomé Hero, Yo-Kai Watch for smartphones, Yo-Kai Daijiten, Ko-Kai Watch geraporhythm and Fantasy Life 2: Twin Moons and the Sacred Village were all announced, but came with no plans for release outside of Japan as of yet.
Of course, Yo-Kai Watch has been hugely popular in Japan, but while the third game in the series has just released in its home country, Europe and the US have only recently had the first game.
Source: press release
