Disney is getting into the gacha game business. The company has just announced Disney Pixel RPG, a free-to-play mobile role-playing game from GungHo Online Entertainment, the Japanese developer perhaps best known for its smash mobile hit Puzzle & Dragons.
The game has a cute, gently meta premise: Video game worlds from different genres inhabited by a bunch of Disney characters have started to break down and bleed into each other. “A myriad of beloved Disney characters” are assembled by the player — who roleplays as a player of these games — to adventure across the different game worlds and restore order to this Disney gaming multiverse.
The Disney characters confirmed for Disney Pixel RPG so far are Mickey Mouse, Maleficent and Aurora from Sleeping Beauty, Ariel from The Little Mermaid, Baymax from Big Hero 6, the Genie from Aladdin, Winnie the Pooh, and Stitch from Lilo & Stitch. While they’re all portrayed in pixel art as you would expect, they’re rendered in slightly different styles according to the in-universe game they’ve emerged from: Maleficent and Aurora are relatively lushly drawn RPG characters, Mickey is a cute board game mascot, Ariel is a simple rhythm game character with a bold outline, and so on. The main image on the game’s website shows Mickey drawn in a variety of styles himself.
There’s little info on the game, other than it will feature “fast-paced, strategic battles featuring simple controls and a convenient auto-play function” and will apparently be approachable for players new to RPGs. Players will have a customizable avatar that can be kitted out with Disney-themed costumes, and Disney characters can be sent on expeditions to gather materials while the player is away.
If there were any doubt that Disney Pixel RPG would be a gacha game — a free-to-play game focused on collecting characters from randomized “pulls” — it’s dispelled by official social posts that show pre-registration rewards of crystal currencies that can be redeemed for “gacha pulls.”
You can pre-register for Disney Pixel RPG on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store for Android phones. The App Store listing indicates an expected release date of Sep. 9.
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