Square Enix has announced a mobile spinoff of World of Final Fantasy called World of Final Fantasy: Meli-Melo. World of Final Fantasy is itself a spinoff of the mainline Final Fantasy games, made in a chibi art style and centered around telling a story that’s not directly about the numbered Final Fantasy heroes, but gives them a chance to be in on the action, much like previous mobile titles like Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius and Final Fantasy: Dimensions. Not many details about the new mobile game were provided, but a few bits about the game mechanics were unveiled, and it was mentioned that the team planned to reuse many assets from the original World of Final Fantasy. This likely means that the new mobile game will be much like its console counterpart. There has been no announcement of when the game may come out, or if it will end up on platforms beyond Android and iOS.
The unveiled mechanics include the character sizes and stacking from the main game. Players will be able to stack up six small characters in a roster, or four medium or two large characters. Combinations that comprise the same amount of space are likely also allowed, such as three small characters and two medium, or one large, one medium, and two small characters. Players will have a “Garden Dome” that acts as a place to befriend Mirages and a base of operations.
Many of the same team members who created the previous game will be working on this one, including executive producer Shinji Hashimoto and director Hiroki Chiba. According to members of the team, the original game was actually planned to be either mobile from the ground up or ported to mobile platforms, but the idea was scrapped due to the high cost of starting the project from scratch with a mobile focus. This could be a port of the console version of World of Final Fantasy, or could be a spinoff or sequel. In any case, the team confirmed that the franchise-within-a-franchise is here to stay, and will continue to get new games across various platforms for the time being.