COLOPL and former Atlus developer Kazuma Kaneko announced the roguelike deckbuilder Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter on March 31. The game is currently in development for PC (Steam) and mobile platforms. Interestingly, the game comes with an “AI Kaneko” system, which is trained on Kaneko himself.
Originally announced in May 2024 under the name “Project MASK,” Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter is Kazuma Kaneko’s first official project since joining Colopl in 2023. Up until his departure from Atlus, Kaneko was involved in the majority of its games, most notably the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei franchises. While he’s most famous for his iconic monster designs, he has worked in positions ranging from character designer, scenario writer, art director to producer.
After joining Colopl, Kaneko created the original concept, characters and worldbuilding for Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter. The upcoming roguelike is set in The Hashira, a state-of-the-art, high-rise housing complex towering over the Tokyo Bay area. The tower has been sealed off by monstrous beings, its residents trapped inside. As the protagonist, who belongs to the national secret organization “Tsukuyomi,” you take on The Hashira, aiming to defeat the enemy on its highest floor in a mix of dungeon-exploration and turn-based card battles.
In an interview with 4Gamer, Kaneko and Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter’s producer reveal that the game incorporates a system called “AI Kaneko.” As you play, AI Kaneko analyzes your runs, including the actions you take, the enemies you fight, dialogue choices you make, and based on this information – it generates custom cards, with their unique names and effects. The illustrations are generated using a model trained on Kaneko’s work.
According to the producer, the AI model was trained by being fed dozens of Kaneko’s illustrations made for the project. The team refined the quality of output through a cycle of generating hundreds of thousands of images and then manually selecting the good vs bad quality results. The good results were then used for further learning.
Asked what he feels about having AI learn from his artwork, Kaneko comments that “It can learn all it wants,” noting that he’s happier to have a model based on his art developed and used by his company than for someone to do it without his permission. “I didn’t feel any aversion to what the AI output. For example, even if you ask me and AI Kaneko to draw illustrations based on the theme of “god,” we would come up with different pictures. Besides, AI Kaneko exists merely as data, so I don’t find it scary.”
Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter is currently in development for the PC (Steam), iOS and Android. English language support is planned.
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