MISTOVER at Niconico Chokaigi 2019

A playable demo of Krafton’s (formerly Bluehole) turn based RPG MISTOVER, was shown off to Japanese players at this years Niconico Chokaigi (held between April 27-28) at the Makuhari Messe Convention Center in Chiba. Niconico is an online social network which became the YouTube of Japan (known then as Niconico Douga) and was best known for its interactive community capabilities including live chat being interposed in real time over the video (YouTube at the time had no live streaming ability and the community could only comment). The social network ended up expanding outwards including live streaming events along with community members having the ability to earn achievement style rewards like stickers for participating (like from uploading content, scheduling streaming events, commenting, etc).

Chokaigi brought the online Niconico community into an yearly real life gathering where attendees are also encouraged to participate in the scheduled events. Krafton made a conscious decision to target the Japanese audience with this turn based rogue-like RPG since these sort of games are heavily played in Japan on PC, console, and mobile devices. Over 600 attendees tried out the game during the event (on both PC and Nintendo Switch).

Like a lot of turn based RPG’s, the simplicity of its visuals belies the difficulty curve (since turn based style games have very distinct/strategic decision tree designs). Some players commented they found themselves quickly surrounded by enemies and ended up dying quickly in the process. Others found the game play difficult (their decisions mattered), yet fun and rewarding. The visual aesthetics was also well received (which makes sense in this particular game space where the Japanese demographic is looking for something on the cuter side in terms of character design).

MiSTOVER represents uncharted territory for Krafton when it comes to these type of smaller single player/limited multiplayer co-op RPG’s (their main area of expertise has been MMO’s like TERA and Ascent: Infinite Realm). Krafton is working on their launch dates for the game (it will be an early access title on Steam).