Kazuma Kaneko, the legendary “Demon Designer” and art director behind the Shin Megami Tensei series, every mainline Persona game and, most recently, Metaphor: ReFantazio, has just revealed his new card game with AI-generated card art, Kazuma Kaneko’s Tsukuyomi. Like with the earlier game Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter, Kaneko isn’t just involved in aspects like game concept and character design but actually appears in-game, or at least an AI recreation of him does.
Coming from mobile game developer Colopl, it’s set to land on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 on April 23, and it’ll cost you $24.99. Or roughly $640, if you want to shell out for the special “Shinma Artist Box” edition.
This reveal was made alongside the announcement that Colopl’s previous free-to-play partnership with Kaneko, Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter, will be coming to a close on April 22 (a day before the release of Kazuma Kaneko’s Tsukuyomi). This was all announced during a livestreamed event on Colopl’s official YouTube last night.
Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter allowed players to create their own AI artwork cards through the use of its “AI Kaneko” mechanic. The in-game Kazuma Kaneko would analyze players’ playstyles and gift them AI-generated cards, based on a library of Kaneko’s work. Kazuma Kaneko’s Tsukuyomi won’t feature the same mechanic, but will instead port 3,600 of the developer’s favourite AI Kaneko-produced cards over to the new version of the game.
We know this because a Colopl representative reached out to Gematsu to clarify: “The Switch version takes a curated amount of those AI generated cards from the previous game and includes them in the new game. The Switch version does not include the generative AI model to create new cards beyond the cards that the team has put into the Switch version.”
Worse still, as noted by Automaton, the official Kazuma Kaneko’s Tsukuyomi website states that the “game uses generative AI in the creation of images, videos, and music.” The same statement says that the devs will “strive to prevent unauthorised use and rights infringement,” but it’s still confirmation that generative AI tools are being used in almost every facet of this game’s development.