When you think of a recently announced Demon Slayer game on the horizon, several ideas might roll through your mind. Perhaps a sequel to the previous arena fighter game, Hinokami Chronicles for instance. Or maybe you predicted the series would move in a new direction with a battle royale style fighter like My Hero Academia. Some may have gone even crazier and said nah, a card game should be on the table. But I doubt anyone thought “well you know what we need, a Demon Slayer: Mario Party Chronicles game for the Nintendo Switch in 2024!”.
This isn’t an official collab, but judging from the trailer the gameplay is so similar that it may as well be. I recognize that fear stemming from landing on the wrong space and encountering a bad event all the same. At the moment it seems this release is staying inside Japan, but I see people in the comments asking for an English localization to be made. My question is… would there even be enough of a market for that? I think some game genres benefit from licensing. I’d be interested in any new anime style fighting game that comes out, but add in a series I watch like Jujutsu Kaisen and my interest immediately skyrockets. The mere thought of combining those two concepts makes me hard. But Mario Party is a style of game where I really don’t see much benefit for other games to crop up emulating its core game loop yet adding the characters and themes from another property. Cool I guess. It’s not like I’m really going to “feel” like Tanjiro from what I can tell. Maybe he’ll have a special dice or minigame passive buff. Pretty neat. Nothing I’d pay a regular title’s price to experience though. Honestly this sort of thing seems more suited to be a skin pack for regular Mario Party. This shit’s still all Japanese though. Maybe if it does well enough or the devs hear enough feedback to garnish an English release, we can see how it’s so much different than regular Mario Party and why by god you’re missing out if you skip it.
This is the last type of game I’d expect for the series. There’s something to be said for branching out I suppose. Time will tell if this was a smart move to bring the anime to casual gamers in an unexpected spinoff, or a complete waste of everyone’s time and money. Are you caught up with Demon Slayer? Do you plan to pick this up if it gets an English release? Does it seem like a fresh idea, or a pointless endeavor? Sharpen your sword, calm your mind, and master the Swift Typing breathing style in the comments below!
UPDATE: In between writing and editing this article, Sega announced we will in fact be seeing an English release in 2024 too under the name Demon Slayer: Sweep The Board!.
