If the name Culdcept isn’t familiar to your ears, I wouldn’t blame you. Although released across three generations of console hardware, the strategic card battler RPG series was mostly a Japan-exclusive game. Now, with publisher Neos Corporation and Grounding Inc. (World’s End Club) taking over OmiyaSoft for the recently released Culdcept BEGINS, series creator Hideo Suzuki didn’t want the team to simply recreate the classics. In fact, he says that would have been the worst possible approach. This was revealed in the Famitsu magazine issue No. 1956 interview, where he talked about the new game alongside original designer Takayuki Jinguu and producer Kouhei Takeshige.
Suzuki explained that one of his guiding principles for any Culdcept project is that it should move the series forward instead of relying on nostalgia. “Whenever I’m approached for making a new Culdcept, my main assumption is, ‘If it’s just reproducing the past, it’ll be boring,'” Suzuki said. “Personally, I want them to make as many changes as possible.”
One suggestion, in particular, completely changed Suzuki’s perspective on how Culdcept BEGINS balancing works. Grounding suggested simplifying the calculation used when chaining territories to speed up matches. The original designers admitted they had never considered the idea themselves. “I was struck thinking, ‘Why didn’t I realize that before?'” Suzuki said. “I became really enthusiastic when they implemented it and told them, ‘Please, you absolutely have to do this!'”
The new character designer Satoshi Matsuura of Bravely Default fame, too, contributes so much to Culdcept BEGINS. Among others, the artist gave the ‘mossball-like’ Alga Sphere a pair of feet, recoloured Kobold to make it more clearly identifiable as a Fire creature, and made the gelatinous Gooba Queen even more ‘gross,’ drawing out strong reactions on social media. Matsuura and Grounding also insisted on redrawing every returning card to ensure everything matched the new style, despite Suzuki and the team initially wanting to reuse old artwork to reduce the workload. All that extra effort made Jinguu believe that Matsuura really wants to add his own ‘individuality’ into everything he draws. “This guy really doesn’t cut corners,” he said.
“It felt a little sense of sadness, like I was marrying off my daughter — Culdcept — to Matsuura-san (laughs),” added Suzuki, who at first was afraid that the new art direction would alienate long-time fans. “I could easily imagine a future where, when people think of ‘Culdcept,’ Matsuura-san’s artwork immediately comes to mind.”
The interview also revealed something pretty surprising: Grounding built Culdcept BEGINS using the in-house engine originally developed by OmiyaSoft rather than remaking it from scratch with Unreal Engine or other industry-standard frameworks. Rather than rebuilding the game’s whole foundations, the new developers focused on improving accessibility and modernizing the experience while preserving what Suzuki described as the ‘core’ of Culdcept.
Neos, he said, respected the older works while also enthusiastically sharing and developing new ideas — something he considers increasingly rare in today’s gaming industry. “[…T]hey approached the project with genuine passion,” said Suzuki. “I’m confident this is a game we can release with our heads held high.”
Culdcept Begins launched on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 on July 16, 2026, with the PC version following sometime in Q4 2026. For more gaming news and interviews, check out GameObserver.
