WILD HEARTS

Wild Hearts is a hack and slash hunting genre video game combat-centered game developed by Omega Force and published by Electronic Arts under its EA Originals label.

Development of the game started in 2018. According to game director Kotaro Hirata, the team learnt from their experience developing the Toukiden series, and intended to create a modern Japanese monster-hunting game. To stand out from other monster hunting games, the team introduced Kemono, monsters which were described as "a fusion of nature and animals", and Karakuri, a building mechanic which supplements the game's melee combat. Monsters and creatures were designed to be threatening and challenging, so that players would not feel "guilty" about killing them. The team did not make Wild Hearts an installment in the Toukiden series because they felt that the game had its own distinct presentation and combat mechanics. The game world was inspired by feudal Japan, and it features four different biomes, each based on one of the four seasons. Originally the game supports four-player multiplayer; this was later altered as the team believed that it would create imbalanced gameplay.

Publisher Electronic Arts announced its partnership with Omega Force and its parent company Koei Tecmo on September 14, 2022. The game would be published under its EA Originals label, which had previously released smaller, independent video games such as It Takes Two and Unravel. The game was officially announced on September 23, 2022. Wild Hearts is set to be released for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on February 17, 2023, with support for cross-platform play.

Trivia

 * This is the fourth Koei Tecmo games to be published on The Epic Games store. The first being Nioh, the second being Nioh 2 and the third being Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin.