Digimon Survive

Unreleased

Digimon Survive (デジモンサヴァイブ) is a video game that also has elements of a tacticial/strategy survival role-playing game. It is developed by Hyde (having been originally developed for two years by Witchcraft) and will be published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. It will release in Japan on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 on July 28 whilst the localized versions will release on those two platforms, as well as on Windows and Xbox One, and are scheduled to release on July 29.

Plot
The game does not take place in the Digital World, and will instead take place in a completely different world.

Takuma Momozuka, Minoru Hyuuga, Aoi Shibuya, Saki Kimishima, Ryo Tominaga, Shuuji Kayama, Kaito Shinonome, Miu Shinonome, and others are on a historical studies extracurricular activities camp during spring break. On the second day Takuma, Minoru and Aoi visit a famous local temple to investigate the legend of the "Beast Gods" (Kemonogami) where a festival to celebrate them will take place. As they explore, they come across, then hear screaming. Koromon and the group run to the source and find their class mates being attacked by other Digimon. Koromon digivolves to and scares the Digimon away. It is at this point, that Takuma and the others discover they are in another world.

Development
The inspiration for the game was taken from the bonds between characters and their Digimon partners from the various Digimon anime series. The staff wanted players to experience this for themselves by making choices that would effect the Digimon's growth. In addition, game producer Kazumasa Habu talked to Digimon Adventure director, Hiroyuki Kakudo about his interpretation of the origins of Digimon, that being that Digimon were not born as a result of humans creating computers, and instead always existed, living alongside humans, though in another dimension, becoming visible to humans once they created computers and digital technology. Digimon may have been manifested through magic or sorcery, through the ancient art of, subjugating them as , , or s, but is now accomplished digitally, making them Digital Monsters. This inspired Habu to make Digimon Survive.

The western version of Digimon Survive has English, German, French, Spanish and Italian subtitles.

Survive was originally scheduled for release in 2019, but faced a series of delays—to 2020, January 2021, fiscal year Q3 2022, and most recently to July 28, 2022 (Japan)/July 29, 2022(Worldwide). Bandai credited the various delays to re-reviewing the game system, production difficulties owing to the, a change in the game's engine, , and a change in developers from Witchcraft to Hyde. and apologized for missing commitments on providing updates on the game's status.

In July 2022, shortly before the release of the game, Habu stated that they had changed the development studio as his original intention was to create the game with a small team on an budget, rather than the budget a Digimon game would usually get, but as the project went on he realized this wasn't possible and had to switch to a bigger studio with a bigger budget to be able to achieve his vision for the game. He also stated he was lucky that the smaller studio (Witchcraft) hadn't used much budget as it allowed him to convince Bandai's stakeholders not to cancel the game. As Witchcraft were using a custom made engine that Hyde could not access, development of the game had to be restarted from scratch which caused the game's development time to double from two years to four years, with development switching from the custom engine to.

Habu also that he used his prior work on the ' franchise as inspiration for the game, as well as taking inspiration from the ' franchise.

Gameplay
Digimon Survive is /Survival RPG hybrid with strategy and roleplaying elements. Player choices influence the direction of the story, including the Digimon's digivolution process. Multiple playthroughs can result in different paths and different digivolutions. The game will feature multiple endings and should wrong choices be made, characters will be killed. The game is split into multiple types of gameplay, such as "Drama Parts", "Search Action", "Free Action", and "Free Battle". During "Drama Parts" the game proceeds as a text adventure to tell the story. In "Search Actions", the player searches for a way to survive. In "Free Action", the player chooses where to go and who to talk due in a limited window of time. During "Free Battle", the player can enter certain areas to train their Digimon and collect items.

Credits

 * Chief Producer: Kazumasa Habu
 * Producer: Katsuaki Tsuzuki
 * Composer: Tomoki Miyoshi
 * Character Designer: Uiti Ukumo

Cast
All voice actors are sourced to the official site's character pages unless stated otherwise.