Cult hit The World Ends With You is in the spotlight once more as Square Enix launches another mysterious teaser for the game on its website. The page resembles an active timer, with the days counting down to November 24. In the background, the silhouette of an urban cityscape (the primary location of the game) can be seen. This isn’t the first time Square Enix has deployed a teaser like this for the franchise, but with the reveal of the 2021 anime adaptation already in the bag we can safely assume this is something else entirely.
The World Ends With You has become a cult hit since it release on Nintendo DS in 2007. It was one of very few games to take full advantage of the console’s touch capability and integrate a gripping, and well-told narrative to boot. Fans loved its humour, originality and heart, and they’ve been demanding a sequel for over a decade now.
The game’s popularity reached such heights in the later 2010s that protagonist Neku Sakuraba wound up appearing in Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts franchise — and the original game even received a Switch port in 2018.
But despite the enduring popularity of The World Ends With You, it’s yet to receive any kind of mainline sequel. With such unique lore, art, characters and world-building, that’s a massive shame — and one that could be corrected shortly.
When the Final Remix version of TWEWY landed on Nintendo Switch, it included an new epilogue teasing upcoming content for the game. It featured strange visions of an alternate world, the erasure of Shinjuku and the spread of Coco’s evil influence in Shibuya. A sequel would likely pick up the threads of this epilogue to weave a whole new tale.
For now, all we know is something that appears to be related to The World Ends With You will be announced in less than six days. The landing page doesn’t give much to go on, with the only clue, ‘BGM ver. 20201118’, appearing to resemble today’s date (2020/11/18) despite the countdown timer ending on November 24.
However it turns out, it looks like there’s something big in store for the franchise. Stay tuned to find out more as we get closer to the final countdown.
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