Soon, you can get your hands on a Studio Ghibli adventure where you control the story.
Publisher Namco Bandai and developer Level-5 announced today that a demo for the Japanese role-playing game Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is landing on the PlayStation Network tomorrow, Dec. 4, in North America and Dec. 5 in Europe.
Ni no Kuni releases in the U.S. on Jan. 22, which gives players plenty of time to explore the world that Level-5 and film company Studio Ghibli created. Joe Hisaishi, who composed the score for Studio Ghibli movies including My Neighbor Totoro, is providing the music for the game.
Level-5 is known for its fluid animation style, evident in games like Professor Layton and Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, while anime fans revere the narrative excellence and visual wonder of Studio Ghibli films such as Princess Mononoke and Howl’s Moving Castle. The combination should work well in a story-driven video game.
In Ni no Kuni, a boy named Oliver travels into another world on a journey to become a wizard and save his mother. He befriends and tames many of the creatures he meets there, training them to battle more formidable foes.
The demo introduces players to two levels, each complete with a boss: the Guardian of the Woods and Moltaan.
“The two levels will give players a pretty good mix of gameplay and experience with Ni no Kuni,” said Denny Chiu, the senior manager of marketing communications at Namco Bandai. “The bosses will definitely give players some challenge but won’t break their backs.”