Unseen, the independent studio founded by former Ghostwire Tokyo developer Ikumi Nakamura, has released a brand-new behind-the-scenes featurette that sheds additional light on the studio's first game, Kemuri. As revealed exclusively on IGN as part of Fan Fest 2024, the featurette introduces fans to some of the international team behind Kemuri and the various ways they are bringing Nakamura's vision to life.
The featurette, which you can watch above, is packed with intriguing concept art and early animation, much of it focusing specifically on the yokai as both foes and potential allies within Kemuri.
"Kemuri is a supernatural online cooperative action PvE game," Nakamura explains during the video. "This game merges the world of yokai with the real one, awakening the intellectual curiosity we lost in the process of growing up."
It goes on to detail how players will take on the role of yokai hunters who will acquire supernatural powers with the help of the "Fox Window," which can be used to see into the spirit realm.
"You explore the city and use the fox window to spot yokai. If that's the origin of the problem, you fight them," says game director Misuzu Watanabe. "Engage in battles, negotation, and acquire yokai to possess and increase your power. Unleashing the power of the yokai you change your visual appearance, using fashion to take action beyond human knowledge. The ability to collect various yokai adds high replay value to the game."
'Kemuri is kind of hard to describe'
Kemuri was first introduced at The Game Awards 2023, where Nakamura took the stage to introduce her new game via a teaser trailer. Notably, while Kemuri gives the impression that it's a fully open world game in the vein of Spiderman, Unseen is seeking to set expectations.
"It's kind of hard to describe, but [I don't want to] actually say open world. We won't actually say that either, because that expectation is very different...I don't know, like Cyberpunk or Fallout. Skyrim is open world. It's a ginormous map. It's not what that is," said Nakamura, who spoke with IGN in a recent interview as part of Fan Fest. "But at the same time, it's not a linear game either, and it's quite hard to describe. So [I] want you to look forward to actually playing the game in the near future."
Nakamura went on to explain that Kemuri is a "semi-open world" or "large island," before clarifiying that it's "actually more like a peninsula." Multiplayer will also include a degree of free-form exploration in which players are "not really told to go one specific direction."
"But anyways, it's not really a super vast, open world game, but it's not a linear game either. But the difference here is that we do actually have quite a bit of verticality in our map so the actual density of the actual map is quite a bit for sure," Nakamura said.
The rest of the video goes on to explain how Kemuri is being brought to life, with the team saying that it is avoiding traditional motion capture in favor of keyframe animation. It will also include a grappling-style traversal system, wall-running, and rail grindin, with players confronting "the nature of death, uncover hidden truths, and face the consequences of their actions in both life and afterlife."
In the coming weeks and months, Unseen will be diving into an "extensive phase of playtesting and development," with a release "just a bit further down the road." In the meantime, check out all the rest of our Fan Fest 2024 reveals, including our deep dive into the Avatar: The Last Airbender remake on Netflix and more.
Kat Bailey is IGN's News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
