Japanese developer Inti Creates has shared new details, gameplay, and the theme song for Card-en-Ciel, their new card-battling RPG.

Here’s the new details, plus the new story trailer and theme song:

A card-battling RPG through the eras of gaming!

Card-en-Ciel is a card-battling, roguelite RPG featuring over 300 unique cards and 50 vocal songs.

Players take control of Neon, a private detective who specializes in solving cases that take place in the virtual net. He must restore order to an in-development game that is under attack by countless characters leaking from other games across history.

Dive into virtual dungeons where each victory earn new cards to add to your deck, strengthen those cards, then take on the powerful protagonists of the invading games. Each card brings a new synergy to your deck, creating combos with each other and the special Muse cards, whose songs add new passive abilities that last for the entire battle.

Today, INTI CREATES has revealed new information on the “real world” heroes, Neon and Ancie, as well as their mysterious rivals, Nanakt and RiTa, with a new trailer that delves into Card-en-Ciel’s JRPG story!

INTI CREATES has also released a new music video for Card-en-Ciel’s theme song, “To the Promised Sky”!

They will be teaming up with Phoenixx Inc. to show the game at Gamescom, this August in Cologne, Germany!

Card-en-Ciel features a full storyline filled with colorful characters!

In Card-en-Ciel, players will use over 300 cards to battle enemies throughout the game. Each of these cards features a different character from 31 different games, both real INTI CREATES’ developed titles and imagined games invented for the Card-en-Ciel universe.

Each of the roguelite dungeons that players venture into features is themed by one of these games, and progresses a main storyline that drives the player through Card-en-Ciel for a complete JRPG experience.

The story begins in the VR world as the “Gaming Chair Detective” Neon arrives to help a developer, Ancie, when her in-development strategy game is suddenly invaded with monsters from other famous game franchises. This digital story takes a strange turn when they encounter “Nanakt”, a mysterious man who creates a virtual dungeon in the middle of the real world!

Today, we are revealing the rival Nanakt and his partner RiTa for the first time with an extensive look at Card-enCiel’s story in this new trailer!

Main Story

“Please save the world.“
…This case begins with a single e-mail.

It arrived in the mailbox of Neon Nanashiki, the “Gaming Chair Detective,” straight from an in-development full-dive VR game. Filled with curiousity, Neon gets to work hacking into the unfinished title.

When Neon manages to log into the game, Rust Tactics, he meets a lone young woman.

“Ancie,” [ahn-see] a developer on the game, was investigating powerful data run rampant inside the virtual world—Mad Obstructive Data, or MODs for short.

Neon is not one to turn down a case, and accepts without hesitation. He promises Ancie to fix RT’s world, and ventures into the dangerous MOD Dungeons investigate.

As the two begin to restore order to RT’s world, they find strange data in the dungeons, called “Error Fragments.”

Suddenly, a mysterious man called “Selevan Nanakt” appears to steal the fragments from them.

Nanakt disappears as suddenly as he arrived, and uses the Error Fragments to create a MOD Dungeon in the real world.

Neon and Ancie rush to log out and investigate, running into each other in the process.

The two of them follow Nanakt straight into the real-life dungeon, where Nanakt is waiting at the end, together with a mysterious girl…

Neon and Ancie venture into the real world!

Neon (VA: Aleks Le)

A talented hacker who solves crimes that take place in full-dive VR worlds, also known as the “Gaming Chair Detective.” When he takes on Ancie’s request to help her in the world of Rust Tactics, he discovers what appears to be sentience characters from other games, kicking off an adventure across the game multiverse.

Ancie (VA: Christina Vee)

A developer with Helios Interactive, makers of Rust Tactics, who reaches out to Neon for help when an incident occurs in the game world.

Ancie supports Neon’s dungeon crawling in various ways, such as analyzing enemy data to create cards.

Introducing the rivals, Nanakt and RiTa!

Get acquainted with Card-en-Ciel’s card-battling gameplay by watching the gameplay trailer! Today, we’ll introduce a key system in Card-en-Ciel’s gameplay: Area Subjugation.

Area Subjugation and its Rewards

Clear out a room and reap the rewards!

Eradicate all enemies from any room in the dungeon, and you’ll get a choice of 3 different rewards.

Recovery

Recovery will restore a portion of your HP.

There are very few ways to restore your HP during a dungeon, and this is the most reliable.

Position

Choose a card from your deck or a Muse you have acquired to position them in the dungeon room.

Having an ally on the field will grant you a bonus while battling in nearby rooms.

When you choose a Muse to position, they will perform from the very beginning of battle in nearby rooms, granting their powerful passive bonus and Special Skill energy immediately.

Any cards you Position will be temporarily removed from your deck and will return when moving to the next floor.

Enhance

Choose this to apply a “Cheat Code” to one of 3 random cards in your deck.

Cheat Codes are powerful additional effects that apply not only to the card you choose, but also every copy of that card in your deck. They can grant additional damage, reduce the card’s playing Cost, or even buff your damage simply by drawing it!

You’ll be able to stack up to 3 Cheat Codes on a single card, so the Enhance option is always useful for powering up your deck.

Game System: Dungeon Rewards

Defeat the boss waiting at the end of a dungeon to clear it and earn a slate of rewards.

Based on how you clear the dungeon, you’ll accelerate Neon’s growth, unlock new difficulty levels, and progress the main story.

Dungeon Results

Aim for as few turns as possible!

Your goal in each dungeon is defeat the powerful boss waiting at the end. Achieve that, and you’ll see the Results screen where you’ll get your well-earned rewards.

The score you earn at the end of the dungeon is largely determined by how many turns you took in battle.

Winning battles in as few turns as possible is certainly important, but skipping battles entirely is an even bigger step to improving your score. This will also let you run through dungeons even faster!

However, fight too few battles, and your deck and Muses may not be strong enough to take on the boss and Elite foes awaiting you. Striking this delicate balance will earn you a top score!

Dungeon Rewards

Clearing a dungeon will unlock new difficulty levels.

Higher difficulties will not only increase enemy stats, but also add new and interesting twists to battles with special rules. Earn a high enough score when clearing a dungeon to unlock up to 3 new difficulties at once!

Clearing a dungeon will also earn “Decode Tokens” which are used to power up your player character.

Each new difficulty level you tackle means more tokens to earn. You can spend them to improve the odds on every dungeon you tackle, to improve your drop rates, Cheat Codes, HP, and more!

Revealing Card-en-Ciel’s theme song, “To the Promised Sky”!

Card-en-Ciel features 50 vocal songs performed by the Muses in-game.

These songs are created for the fictional game universes as if they were the real theme songs, battle themes, and endings, all composed in the style and genres of the appropriate eras.

Today, we are revealing the theme song of Card-en-Ciel itself, performed by Ancie’s Japanese voice actress, Ruriko Noguchi, with a special music video!

Story Trailer

Theme Song

Card-en-Ciel is set to launch on October 24th for Windows PC (via Steam), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, PS4, and PS5.