Marvelous announces two new Rune Factory games, including Rune Factory 6

Publisher Marvelous and XSEED Games held the 2023 Marvelous Game Showcase stream event on May 26th. The half-hour stream featured looks at upcoming releases like LOOP8: Summer of Gods, but the publisher also brought a handful of new game announcements, including two new entries in the Rune Factory series.

The decision to announce two new Rune Factory titles stemmed from Marvelous' desire to adopt the theme of "East and West" for the projects.

The first game, representing "East" is a Rune Factory spin-off code-named "Project Dragon", though it has the Japanese title Ryu no Kuni: Rune Factory ("Rune Factory: The Dragon's Land"). The teaser featured stylized Japanese environments, creatures, and characters, as well as real-time combat gameplay, magic, and riding on the back of a serpentine, "Asian-style" dragon.

You can see it at about 20 minutes into the full showcase:

Rune Factory Series Director Shiro Maekawa said that the development team wanted to set the new game in the "eastern land" often referenced by characters in previous Rune Factory titles, giving existing fans both a taste of a completely new setting, while unfolding the mysteries of a place only vaguely referred to in extant material.

The game uses a more "cool" style for its creature and character design as contrasted to the more cutesy graphics of the main series. However, it'll still have familiar elements, like day-to-day life, adventuring, and finding romance. The protagonist is something called an "Earthmate", and is connected to the dragons seen in the trailer.

Marvelous also announced the next numbered entry in the series, Rune Factory 6. No other detail about it was available, beyond a glimpse at the game's logo.

Rune Factory 6 and Rune Factory Project Dragon are in development, but have no announced platforms or release windows as of yet. Check out RPG Site's review of Rune Factory 5 at this link.