Ninjala first appeared during E3 as a discreet Gungho game that appeared for several seconds on the E3 Nintendo Direct’s sizzle reel, but the game actually has well-known talent behind it, such as Takeshi Arakawa, former co-producer of the Dissidia Final Fantasy series. He and Kazuki Morishita, CEO of Gungho, recently sat down for an interview with Bahamut in order to discuss the upcoming 3D action game.

Here are the highlights:

Around five years ago, Morishita wanted to make an action versus game that both children and adults could enjoy, and he just happened to watch sports chanbara. He remembered that he used to play pretend ninja chanbara, and instantly thought that a sports chanbara and ninja mix would work.

The reason why the game is being developed for Nintendo Switch is because it just so happened to be a good platform that fits well with the genre of the game.

Arakawa joined the project around two and a half years ago, when Morishita passionately went up to him and talked about trying to make those childhood memories into a game.

In the world of Ninjala, the World Ninja Association (WNA) has invented a Ninja Bubble Gum that lets children with ninja DNA become capable of using ninjutsu. In order to find people with the potential of being a ninja, the WNA hold a ‘Ninjala’ tournament. However, there are several bad guys who want to use this for their own ends.

There are eight main characters in the story mode, but they only differ based on their character background. For example, Berecca is the WNA scientist who invented Ninja Bubble Gum, and when she eats it she turns into a child form. Each character will have their own backstory like this.

In this game, you can have up to eight players facing off at once. The quickest way to score points is by getting an ‘Ippon!’ by attacking opponents with different weapons shaped through bubble gum. Whoever has the highest score will win.

There is a bit of strategy involved around making weapons out of differently-sized bubble gum. Weapons made from smaller bubbles are easier to use but don’t do much damage, while larger bubbles make stronger but slower weapons.

Morishita wants to release Ninjala simultaneously across all regions. The reason why the game hasn’t seen much exposure in Japan yet is because they wanted to gauge NA and EU reactions first.

Ninjala is in development for the Nintendo Switch and has a Spring 2019 release window.