Disney is getting into the gacha game business. The company just announced Disney Pixel RPGa free-to-play mobile role-playing game from GungHo Online Entertainment, the Japanese developer perhaps best known for its smash hit mobile Puzzle & Dragons.
The game has a cute, fuzzy meta premise: Video game worlds from various genres, inhabited by a bunch of Disney characters, have begun to crumble and blur together. “A multitude of beloved Disney characters” are assembled by the player — playing as a player of these games — to travel across the various game worlds and restore order to this Disney gaming multiverse.
The Disney Characters Confirmed for Disney Pixel RPG so far Mickey Mouse, Maleficent and Aurora are from Sleeping BeautyAriel from The little MermaidBaymax from Great Hero 6the spirit of AladdinWinnie the Pooh and Stitch from Lilo and Stitch. While they’re all depicted in pixel art as you’d expect, they’re rendered in slightly different styles depending on the in-universe game they sprang from: Maleficent and Aurora are relatively lushly drawn RPG characters, Mickey is a cutesy board game mascot, Ariel is a simple rhythm game character with a striking outline, and so on. The main image on the game’s website shows Mickey himself drawn in a variety of styles.
There’s little information about the game, other than that it will feature “fast, strategic battles with simple controls and a convenient auto-play feature” and will apparently be accessible to players new to RPGs. Players will get a customizable avatar that can be outfitted with Disney costumes, and Disney characters can be sent on expeditions to gather materials while the player is away.
If there was any doubt that Disney Pixel RPG would be a gacha game – a free-to-play game focused on collecting characters from random “draws” – it is being pushed out by official social posts which show pre-registration rewards of crystal currency that can be exchanged for “gacha pulls.”
You can register in advance for Disney Pixel RPG on the iOS App Store And Google Play Store for Android phones. The App Store listing lists the expected release date as September 9th.