Aquaplus and Yuke's show interest in bringing Dungeon Travelers and Tears to Tiara to current platforms

DenFamiNico Gamer has published a new interview with Aquaplus' Naoya Shimokawa and Yuke's President Yukinori Taniguchi. This interview primarily covered future plans for both companies, following Yuke's acquisition of Aquaplus last year.

The biggest highlights of this interview are the declarations of interest for both companies to release new ports of Aquaplus' earlier titles to current platforms. While Aquaplus has been nowadays better known for the ToHeart visual novels and the Utawararerumono series (the latter of which is set to be put on hiatus after the release of Past and Present Rediscovered), the companies also stated interest in porting older RPG series like Dungeon Travelers and Tears to Tiara.

The beginning of this interview immediately covers the most important topic. You can find our translation of the segment right below:

DenFamiNico Gamer: A few months have passed since the announcement in August 2025 that Aquaplus would become a subsidiary of Yuke's, but are there any tangible projects that have progressed?

Naoya Shimokawa: We're now at a phase where we can finally see integration around the financial affairs, so we are still yet to determine what we'll do together. However, it does not mean there is absolutely nothing at all; it was all thanks to Yuke's that we could release a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of Utawarerumono: Past and Present Rediscovered. The development started way earlier, so the plan for a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition was not there from the beginning. And when we consulted with Yuke's about that, they quickly replied "We might be able to do that".

Yukinori Taniguchi: It's because Yuke's have the experience of releasing on multiple platforms, including obviously the Nintendo Switch 2. From here on, we would also like to port past titles to current platforms.

Naoya Shimokawa: Regarding the ports of past titles, Yuke's also have the technological power. So once we have decided to release them, I feel like the release timings wouldn't be that far away. We still haven't decided anything concrete yet, but I think I want to release Routes and the Dungeon Travelers series to some kind of platform. Also, the PS3 version of Tears to Tiara was a title that would be difficult to port for Aquaplus, but actually someone who was involved with its production back then is in Yuke's now, so I feel like we can see light [at the end of the tunnel]. Nevertheless, it can't be helped that I keep on stating my own hopes, so I'd like to hear from all the game fans about "what kind of titles do you want us to port".

The interview also hinted that if Aquaplus and Yuke's were to work together on brand-new games, the presidents noted that the genres would most likely be a fighting game like Aquapazza or a strategy RPG. For the latter genre, Shimokawa noted that he wants to make a high level of fusion where the gameplay system does not clash with the characters and scenarios. He added that the strategy RPG genre fits well with multi-protagonist stories, and he could also add a lot of characters without costing as much as a regular RPG.

A later part of the interview also went more in-depth about a possible Dungeon Travelers sequel:

DenFamiNico Gamer: [After asking about a new ToHeart sequel] What about the sequel to the Dungeon Travelers series?

Naoya Shimokawa: That game was a dungeon RPG, so we put more effort to the gameplay system than usual. But if we are to make a new game for it, there is a big issue. Because this game not only had a lot of characters; their pictures would also be altered on a Class Change, so this game actually took a whole lot of time on the design side. If we are to release its new game, I wonder how we'll tackle this issue.

Taniguchi and Shimokawa would then go back and forth about 2D and 3D character portrayals. While Aquaplus is more recently seen putting more effort into 3D presentations, Shimokawa notes that many fans of Aquaplus games since the 2D era still prefer to see in-game characters in 2D, as evidenced by some feedback from the recently released ToHeart remake. The presidents would then share possible ideas like designing characters with 3D in mind from the start or seriously implementing toon shading.