This Week in Mobile Games

Heaven Burns My Dread

This week's This Week in Mobile Games is being sponsored again by our friends at Grand Summoners!

Find out more about their current collaboration with Touhou LostWord further down in this week's column!

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Hello, and welcome once more to the latest edition of This Week In Mobile Games! It's been a rough couple of weeks, as despite my promise to give hot new gacha game Neverness to Everness the old college try, some unfortunate hardware troubles left me deprived of both a mobile device and a PC capable of running it.

While that means I'll have to push back my impressions of the game to the next installment of the column, we shall nevertheless press on with the latest updates! 

While that means I'll have to push back my impressions of the game to the next installment of the column, we shall nevertheless press on with the latest updates!

Heaven Burns Red Announces Persona 5 Royal Crossover in Japan

On May 22nd, the Japanese edition of Wright Flyer Studio and Key's Heaven Burns Red will kick off a crossover event with those most prolific of game characters, the Phantom Thieves of Persona 5. The developers promoted the event with a livestream and a series of trailers. Featuring a story written by Key (with supervision from Atlus), the event is titled Operation Takanawa Mementos ~Wake Your Heart~, and begins when Heaven Burns Red protagonist Ruka Kayamori wakes up in a strange world that looks quite a lot like Persona 5's labyrinthine Mementos dungeon. There, she and fellow Seraph members Tsukasa Tojo and Irene Redmayne will hang out with the Phantom Thieves, including Joker, Queen (Makoto Niijima), Violet (Kasumi Yoshizawa), and Morgana (Not A Cat).

Players will be able to roll on the gacha for Queen and Violet, while Morgana is a free giveaway for participation. Notably, Morgana is also Heaven Burns Red's very first playable male character (much like the playable from Pascal from NieR:Automata is the first playable male character in NIKKE, come to think of it). 

Fans of the HBR-original characters will also be able to roll for a new version of Tsukasa, dressed up in the catsuit worn by Persona 5's Panther (Ann Takamaki), though Panther herself won't be making an appearance. Wright Flyer Studio is giving the game a bit of a makeover to evoke the very distinct look of Persona 5. The UI will feature that game's distinct use of high-contrast red, white, and black text, and characters from the event will also launch All-Out Attacks in combat. 

As for when the event will land on the English-language Global Edition of Heaven Burns Red, the timing is anyone's guess. There appears to be a content lag between the Japanese and Global versions of about a year, but it's my understanding that it's on an accelerated schedule of sorts designed to help it close the game, seeing as the Japanese edition began several years before Global launched (with many players simply assuming that it would never come out in English).

I haven't mentioned Heaven Burns Red in this column before, but to be perfectly honest, I hold it and Wright Flyer Studio in high esteem. If I were to recommend a gacha-based game to a person who is otherwise uninterested in playing gacha games, it would probably be Heaven Burns Red. It is, in some ways, an opus work of Key and famed visual novel writer/composer Jun Maeda (of  Air, Clannad, Little Busters!, Kanon, and other classics of the big-feelings-sad-girls romance anime genre). Heck, Heaven Burns Red even featured a full crossover with Angel Beats! last year. 

While the game is, in theory, a hybrid visual-novel-RPG with turn-based battles in a post-apocalyptic setting, the real attraction of Heaven Burns Red lies in the stories of the many characters within, especially inflected with the goofball antics of Ruka Kayamori, who is a contender if not a favorite for one of the most charismatic anime lesbians ever conceived.

It also helps that it's very free-to-play and casual-friendly as far as gacha games go. Default gameplay difficulty only really pressures players aiming to maximize their scores, while those who are just there for the story will get plenty to help them muddle through with a minimum of fuss. Almost all of the game's events enter a permanent archive that's free to read, as well, though notably the Persona 5 event will be limited in its accessibility (probably due to its nature as a cross-brand collab).

With Heaven Burns Red deep in my backlog of "gacha stories to catch up with someday," I'm looking forward to seeing the day Ruka and crew meet the Phantom Thieves in English. And for those worried that a Persona 5 crossover is some kind of gacha game "kiss of death," it is worth pointing out that Wright Flyer Studio's other game, Another Eden, is still ongoing long after its own Persona 5 crossover.

Genshin Impact's Luna VII Update Launches on May 20, Teases Another Dottore Showdown

HoYoVerse appears to be going all in on getting longtime Genshin Impact players hyped up for what's coming in August with the Snezhnaya update. Case in point: A new teaser showing off the region's snowy environs, teases of the new traversal mechanics (such as boosting in a snowball and riding up a bolt of frozen lightning), a shot of a luxurious train that puts the Astral Express to shame, and...the Traveler with a gun?

It's almost like those "Genshin but with guns" fan animations that keep getting pushed into my YouTube feed...

Anyway, there are still a few months to go before then, which leaves a bunch of table-setting events to lay out the stage with. That seems to be the general vibe of the actual subject of this section: The Luna VII update, Truth Amongst the Pages of Purana, which brings the Traveler back to the jungles and deserts of Sumeru on May 20th.

With the narrative and the hype cycle leaning heavily on what's to come in Teyvat's northern continent, the time is ripe to revisit places past, such as the land of Dendro Archon Nahida, where the Fatui seem to be escalating matters, resulting in what looks to be a military occupation, and a teased showdown with a cyberspace version of the Dottore (who players confronted in the flesh back in version 6.3).

In the days since the announcement was made, I've seen some grousing online that Genshin is "spinning its wheels," with events like this designed to "run out the clock" until August by having players revisit "old content" given a new coat of narrative significance. While I somewhat understand the sentiment - I was never a big fan of the Sumeru region, and considered it one of the more trying portions of the overall saga compared to Fontaine and Natlan which came after (I haven't played anything past that so far), I'd have to argue against the point: Going back to an older location makes perfect sense for Genshin, especially now.

There's no denying that Genshin Impact is in that sort of between-version numbers transition period, like many before it. Perhaps that feeling of losing momentum is simply more than what's coming is being promoted as especially significant, which makes the place-setting activities seem that much less "consequential" to players hungry to see what's coming next.

At the same time, though, the real star of Genshin's world has been its world. While it has some rivals now, as 3D gacha games escalate their sense of scale and graphical fidelity, Genshin's sense of scale was unmatched at its debut, and only grew with every passing update, as the Traveler trekked across Teyvat to hang out with the various Archons in their search for their lost sibling. Even while its business model revolves around selling new characters on the gacha banners, those characters would be worth so much less without the context added by their placement in Teyvat's geography, both cultural and literal*. That in mind, it's only appropriate that on the verge of what could be the end of the Traveler's journey**, events should help remind them, and by extension, players, what's at stake by sending them through the places they've been.

The Luna VII event will also debut three new playable characters: Nicole, the first playable mage of the Hexenzirkel, Lohen, the sadistic-looking captain of the Knights of Favonius' Fifth Company, and Prune, a Witch Hunter and future friend of OG Genshin's little menace Klee.

*This perspective also makes the game's shortfalls when it comes to representation - particularly where miHoYo draws on real-world cultures and peoples as inspiration to pattern its fictional nations after - seem that much more egregious.

**I have no reason to believe that any ending to Genshin Impact's story here will be permanent, but the framing definitely hints that something's going to conclude to make room for the new, and miHoYo hasn't let some little thing like the end of a story stop a gacha game from continuing.

Wuthering Waves Teases A Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Crossover

You might think that the Persona 5 Phantom Thieves showing up in Heaven Burns Red might be strange, but it's really not that far-fetched (at least not compared to some of the games they've shown up in over the years). Heaven Burns Red takes place on Earth and uses various real-life locations throughout the story. Most of the characters are even Japanese student-age kids, the same as the Phantom Thieves themselves.

The same can't be said of Wuthering Waves and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners crossing over, though. While WuWa is vaguely science-fantasy-shaped, about the only commonality it has with the world of Edgerunners as seen in Trigger's anime series...is the presence of a cool, huge, futuristic motorcycle. 

But that's not about to stop Kuro Games, which teased the arrival of Edgerunners characters Lucy and Rebecca on Solaris-3 with a teaser trailer narrated by "Your man, Stan" and a near beat-for-beat homage to Cyberpunk 2077's intro.

Then again, I suppose the Edgerunners are hardly strangers to cross-dimensional travel at this point. Heck, Lucy's in Guilty Gear! 

Astrae Oratio Shows Off With a "Super Teaser"

Last time I detailed that the upcoming Astrae Oratio was mainly interesting for the involvement of ex-Blue Archive creatives at studio Dynamis One, currently accused of essentially pirating a Nexon project to announce an almost-immediately-canceled new game with very Blue Archive-like vibes, to say the least.

Now, Dynamis One and its backers at NC (aka NCSoft) have unveiled a "Super Teaser" for Astrae Oratio, and...the vibes are still very Blue Archive, I've gotta say. 

If you've played Blue Archive or are familiar with its various promotional videos, you'll clock the similarities quickly. The Astrae Oratio Super Teaser is mainly made up of text art and flashing, dramatic, cryptic quotes set against soaring modern music, just like Blue Archive's most famous PV (minus the event art teases).

I'm not saying this as some kind of "gotcha," mind you. It's not unusual for creative folks to make work in their style, and if anything, Astrae Oratio's super teaser is a fairly firm reminder that some of the big names at Dynamis One helped define Blue Archive for much of its audience, to the point that much of Blue Archive's activity since their departure has involved the people left proving to the players that they've "got the juice" (to varying degrees of success). 

Anyway, if you're not inclined to rapidly pause through the frames to read the quotes, the newly updated official website is somewhat more informative about Astrae Oratio's actual premise. It, too, is quite Blue Archive, at least if you want to boil things down to bullet points:

• The game takes place in "Tokyo '89," an alt-historical fantasy version of Tokyo where 1889 has advanced rapidly in terms of technology, to the point that Tokyo looks more like it did in 1989, complete with Tokyo Tower and 
• Players are the "Shunin" ("Chief"), a low-ranking public official assigned to a mysterious Special District Office, an agency tasked with mediating and arbitrating magician-related incidents.
• Tokyo is rife with magicians living undercover, each claiming a modern Tokyo ward as their "dominion" and jostling for control and dominance.

Once again, the commonalities are very noticeable, but I have to say, absent any apparent malfeasance, the game - or at least its premise - seems neat. I've always been a bit of a sucker for the "clean future" vibe of Blue Archive itself, and positioning the player as a troubleshooter who intercedes and mediates between rival factions of anime cuties is a very productive setup. With the right character designs and a decent core story, we could have something interesting on our hands, whenever it debuts*.

*It's worth noting that we still don't know the nature of Astrae Oratio as a game, nor its target platforms or release window, so it might even be out of scope for this column in the end.

But Now, Let's End With A Few News Tidbits

• Developer Concode won the Best Mobile Game Award at the Taipei Game Show Indie Game Award 2026 for its game Graytail, which is set for release in 2027. Described as a Zelda-like mystery-adventure, the game has players finding and rescuing a pilot from a mysterious Pacific Island.
• NC's Limit Zero Breakers is entering its closed "Prologue Test" phase on June 10, 2026, and players can sign up at the official website. Developed by VIC Game Studios for Android, iOS, and PC, it's looking a lot like a third-person character action game with flashy attacks, big monsters, and rapid character-switching. If that sounds, for lack of a better word, Genshin-like, longer combat demos from last year's Tokyo Game Show seem to show off some more action-y combat, including parries and other, more advanced play.
• Playdigious announced that hit ranching game Slime Rancher is launching on mobile on May 26, 2026, and teased some mobile gameplay to show off the adapted touch control scheme.
• As detailed by Jean-Karlo, Sega's latest financial reports reveal the company's growing aversion to the free-to-play market's volatility, where games are built and then either become the world's 2nd or 3rd biggest thing or crash and burn. Alongside canceling the vaunted "Super Game," Sega also mentioned some disappointment in the performance of Angry Birds maker Rovio. Including layoffs carried out last year, Sega is in the process of "rebuilding" the studio and reprioritizing some of its staff, with MobileGamer.biz reporting that almost 100 staffers were moved from working on free-to-play titles to "other projects."

And that's it for me, as I pray quietly for my devices to return from repair limbo. Stay safe, and see you next time!