Roco Kingdom is a creature-collecting webgame with over 300m players in its native China that has also spawned various film and TV spin-offs along the way. Now its creator, Tencent-owned Morefun, is attempting to break through to a global audience with a new PC, console and mobile game.
The new version – which shares the same name as the original 2010 webgame – is developed by Morefun, the Tencent studio behind Arena Breakout: Infinite, One Piece Ambition and Naruto Mobile. Roco Kingdom combines traditional turn-based combat with open world exploration and live service elements.
Debuting first this year in China, Roco Kingdom drew in around 30m players in little over a week. Global audiences then got its first glimpse during this summer’s Gamescom Opening Night Live event, and those with an invite can go hands on with a closed beta test starting today, October 27.
Morefun is pitching Roco Kingdom as “more consumer friendly” than other online RPGs, according to narrative director and localisation lead Xiaoye. Monetisation is focused solely around cosmetics and a battle pass, and access to Jinies – the game’s term for creatures, of which there will be over 400 in the full release – won’t be paywalled either. For example, if Jinies feature in a battle pass, then players can visit another friend’s world who has purchased it to catch them for free.
This approach extends not only to progression – “we don’t want players to feel a huge pressure into spending to keep up”, says Xiaoye – but to the game’s competitive aspect as well: “Our commitment is a level playing field in PvP with no pay-to-win gacha. We want players to compete with confidence and with fairness in the game.”
Roco Kingdom will offer cross-play and cross-save support between its various platforms, and Morefun says it is “100% optimised” for mobile. Its slower paced, turn-based combat is well-suited for touchscreens, says Xiaoye, but the game also supports controllers for those who want to play that way.
There are some differences between the Chinese and worldwide versions, but Morefun is keen to keep the core game the same, with plans to sync the content of the two within three months of launch. As for what the closed beta is actually testing, the studio wants to focus on localisation (such as tweaking the names of Jinies to suit various languages) and the user interface: “We’re going to keep a close eye on player feedback on that front, because whatever worked for the domestic market, we might find new feedback from global players,” said Xiaoye.
While the franchise is popular in China, Roco Kingdom is practically unknown elsewhere – so from the outset, this new game is designed to accommodate newcomers. “We did pay a lot of homage to previous works, but not directly – so it’s not [that] this story starts directly after previous movies or game plots,” Xiaoye explained. “This is more like a reimagination, and call-back in terms of theme and character inspirations.”
“So for anyone new to the game, it’s a completely fresh start – you don’t need to worry about having time to play the original game…this goes the same for the Chinese audience too: a lot of the players joining the new game, they haven’t played the original 16 years ago, so we’ve designed everything to take that into consideration.”
This first Roco Kingdom closed beta test is set to run for around 30 days, with plans for at least one more test before the game’s full global launch by the middle of 2027.
