Japanese game developer and publisher Nijibox has announced today that it has released its latest title Monster Fantasia for the Kotagames platform. Kotagames is a feature phone game platform that is rapidly growing in Southeast Asia, and apparently there’s good money in it too. It has over 2.5 million users.
Monster Fantasia is a card battle game in which you assume the role of a monster tamer trying to save the world from out-of-control monsters. Like many games in the genre, you’ll collect monster cards, perform missions, and right bosses. The gameplay is simple, but looks fun for a feature phone title. You can check out a few of the promo screenshots below.
It’s interesting to see Nijibox exporting the card battle genre to Southeast Asia, and I can’t help but find it somewhat surprising that it is having some success. Elsewhere in the world, DeNA and Cygames has succeeded in pushing its Rage of Bahamut card battle game in a number of markets, most importantly in the US market, and more recently in Korea.
Nijibox previously launched another title from its Fantasia franchise, Costume Fantasia, on Kotagames back in September. The folks at Nijibox say that that game has been well received so far.
The Japanese publisher plans to follow this launch on Kotagames by bringing Monster Fantasia to the Mig33 platform soon as well, with that launch scheduled for December 18. Mig33 has over 50 million registered users around the world.
Nijibox is owned by Japanese human resources giant Recruit. I had a chance to speak with its CEO Yoichi Aso back in October, who noted that the company is also eyeing Korea, Malaysia, and China as a part of its expansion plans.
