How Hades Directly Inspired Bandai Namco's First-Ever Roguelite

During Summer Game Fest past week, you’d beryllium forgiven for having overlooked Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree. It’s a marque caller rogue-like that got a very, precise little trailer and small successful the mode of different accusation oregon fanfare. But its antithetic improvement communicative whitethorn marque Towa 1 of the astir absorbing games that appeared during the show.

I spoke with Daisuke Nagaoka, shaper astatine Bandai Namco connected Towa, and Shuhei Yamashita, crippled manager astatine developer Brownies, pursuing the announcement of the crippled and immoderate hands-on playtime, which you tin work here. The 2 started by catching maine up connected the past of Brownies, a workplace with a fascinating pedigree.

Brownies evolved retired of Nintendo-owned Brownie Brown Inc, a Tokyo-based institution founded by Mana bid veterans Shinichi Kameoka and Kouji Tsuda. As Brownie Brown, the developer co-developed a fig of beloved games specified arsenic Sword of Mana, Heroes of Mana, Super Mario 3D Land, and Fantasy Life. But then, successful 2012, the institution announced that it would officially go a Nintendo enactment studio, and alteration its sanction to 1-Up Studio. When this happened, Kameoka departed, and with different erstwhile Brownie Brown developers formed Brownies.

Ever since, Brownies has made a sanction for itself with games similar Fantasy Life Link!, the Egglia series, and co-development connected Doraemon Story of Seasons, which Bandai Namco published. Nagaoka explains that this existing narration had gone well, truthful arsenic the teams were finishing up Doraemon, Bandai decided it wanted to enactment with Brownies again. “Their creativity was truthful fantastic arsenic such, that we wanted to make thing archetypal and we decided to enactment together.”

But Bandai Namco didn’t extremity up getting precisely what it ordered. Yamashita explains that Bandai Namco primitively came to Brownies asking for an archetypal RPG “with a Japanese flair, Japanese taste.” It’s a sensible request, fixed Brownies’ past work. But Yamashita, who was a large instrumentality of roguelites and roguelites, had a antithetic idea. He counter-pitched Bandai Namco connected a genre of crippled the institution had ne'er published before.

So wherefore did Bandai Namco accidental yes?

“There are 3 things,” Nagaoka says. “First is this roguelite genre, erstwhile you look astatine the worldwide market, determination is simply a large lawsuit base. So from the concern perspective, that is simply a bully direction. And secondly, Bandai Namco, we thought this is worthy a challenge, due to the fact that we haven't done thing similar this before. So we were acceptable to instrumentality connected this challenge.

“And the 3rd constituent is that RPGs are based connected bully stories, but determination aren't that galore roguelite games that person a coagulated storyline. So we wanted to make thing that has a bully storyline with the roguelite, and by doing that, we thought we could differentiate ourselves.”

There was 1 roguelite, however, that did person the benignant of communicative and elements Brownies and Bandai Namco were looking for: Hades.

“That's a crippled that’s truly comfy to play,” Yamashita says. “The playability is good. So that was thing I wanted to execute with this crippled arsenic well.”

Bandai Namco did get its way, however, successful that Towa is surely a crippled with a “Japanese flair.” It’s inspired heavy by Japanese and much broadly Eastern motifs, says Yamashita, adjacent though helium adds that there’s nary circumstantial portion of folklore oregon story that’s straight retold successful the game. The characters, for instance, each screen a antithetic motif, specified arsenic a shiba, a koi, and a samurai. Brownies primitively came up with 24 antithetic characters, each with unsocial silhouettes and personalities, and an interior contention narrowed the tract down to conscionable eight.

But this is wherever Towa differs from Hades and different games of the genre. Instead of playing 1 quality astatine a time, players power two: 1 carrying a sword, and different successful a enactment relation carrying a staff. Each quality has antithetic abilities depending connected which relation they’re playing, and some tin beryllium controlled independently utilizing the near and close sticks and antithetic buttons. It’s a configuration that took immoderate getting utilized to (as I wrote successful my preview), but yet proved to beryllium an absorbing twist connected what I was utilized to from games similar Hades.

“There are 2 benefits to having these 2 characters,” Yamashita says. “Initially... Well, successful 3D games the close instrumentality is for maneuvering the camera. So this benignant of game, erstwhile you're looking down, I thought that this mechanics would let being capable to run oregon to maneuver having 2 characters. So that was our thought.

“And past secondly, having 2 characters from the communicative constituent of view, having the relationships oregon the connections betwixt these characters and having conversations, that would springiness much extent to it. So we thought that determination would beryllium a payment to person these 2 characters.”

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree is retired connected September 19, 2025 connected PlayStation 5, Xbox Series consoles, PC via Steam, and Nintendo Switch. You tin drawback up connected our little acquisition hands-on with the crippled here.

Rebekah Valentine is simply a elder newsman for IGN. You tin find her posting connected BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a communicative tip? Send it to [email protected].