There’s a new Ni no Kuni game coming, but we don’t know how to feel

Any Studio Ghibli fans out there know the name Ni no Kuni, as the game features animated sequences by the magical movie makers. As we reel from the announcement of Bloomwalker, the seventh game in the series, we can’t help but wonder whether it’ll be as fanciful as we want.

Project Bloomwalker got its first announcement in 2025 during the Gamescom Xbox showcase, where the game gave off serious Howl’s Moving Castle vibes, but was only slated for Xbox consoles. Now, during Tokyo Game Show 2026, the ‘Project’ has been dropped, and the game is now coming to Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. The game does look truly whimsical, with the classic higgledies coming back, along with many sentient machines assisting the protagonist, who wields a broom and wears a cute cloak. The game is set in the Ni no Kuni universe, but doesn’t have the name in the title.

Our issue, though, is that Ni no Kuni is a Level-5 property. The first trailer didn’t mention the company, but Ni no Kuni has always had involvement with it. While previous titles in the series like Wrath of the White Witch and Revenant Kingdom are outstanding games, it’s sad to see where the developer stands on generative AI, as it recently (and deservedly) found itself in hot water for some pretty shoddy practices.

Earlier in September, Level-5 released a showcase of upcoming titles, including Professor Layton and the World of Steam and Yo-Kai Watch, which heavily used AI, with a fully generated spokes ‘person’ hosting the stream. This rightly angered a lot of fans – including me – and has lost the developer a lot of dignity; many people have now turned away from their upcoming titles.

The developer’s involvement in Bloomwalker makes me think twice about the game, as there’s nothing that says ‘the whimsy of Ghibli-like worlds’ less than artwork generated by artificial intelligence. At present, we don’t know if anything is actually AI-generated, but we’re keeping an eye out and really want clarification.

It’s also worth noting that the last Ni no Kuni game, Cross Worlds, also got some negative reactions due to having blockchain and crypto features in it. Funnily enough, Cross Worlds’ servers officially shut down today, September 17, but the game did relaunch with one unified server back in July, without the Marblex integration. This Reddit post has the developer’s notice in full about it. Hopefully, both companies have learned, and Bloomwalker will be as good as we want it to be.