Level-5’s upcoming RPG life sim Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time —first announcedduring a Nintendo Direct livestream earlier this year — is set to beproducedby Mega Man’s Keiji Inafune. In an interview with the Japanese video games outlet Famitsu (viaNintendoEverything), Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino confirmed Inafune’s involvement as producer, stating that “Inafune has the ability to bring people together and […] with a strong and dedicated creative team at his disposal, [Hino] could entrust him to make a completely new Fantasy Life title”.
Inafune is best known for his work on theMega Manseries, beginning with the first Mega Man (released on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987) for which he was an artist and designer. In addition to his having produced several Mega Man titles since, Inafune has additionally worked on such video games asOnimusha,Dead Rising, and — most notably —Mighty No. 9. In 2010, Inafune founded video game development studio Comcept Inc., which wasacquired by Level-5in 2017, and is known today as Level-5 Comcept.
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According to Akihiro Hino, Level-5 Comcept is currently steering“the main body”of Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time’s development, with Inafune at the helm: “Inafune [has] created not only a new crafting system for us to play with, but even went as far as to create a whole new life, too,” said Hino, cheerfully.
Inafune’s island crafting mechanic will be the newest addition to the gameplay of the increasingly bustlingFantasy Lifeseries. As first glimpsed in Fantasy Life i’s announcement trailer — andfurther detailedduring theLevel-5 Vision 2023 showcaseheld in March — players will be able to terraform their Fantasy Life i islands at their creative whims. Hino, Inafune, and the team at Level-5 Comcept intend for the new crafting system to complement the freewheeling spirit of the Fantasy Life series, while still allowing players to, as Hino has put it, “do all the things that were fundamental to the sandbox nature of the previous games.”
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is the long-anticipated sequel toFantasy Life, the first and original Fantasy Life title which released on the Nintendo 3DS more than a decade ago, and which remains exclusive to that console to this day. Currently slated for a release sometime this year, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time will be launching for the Nintendo Switch in the near future.
