Dragon Ball creator’s latest game adaptation announced

Bandai Namco Entertainment have announced a new RPG, Sand Land, which is an adaptation of a manga from 2000 created by Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama. It comes alongside an anime film, which was announced in December, and it looks delightful.

Sand Land follows the story of Beelzebub, the prince of the underworld and the son of Lucifer, who considers himself a “super evil fiend” but is actually a pretty chill guy. He teams up with Rao, a sheriff who’s trying to save the world from a water shortage, and Thief, an elderly demon who steals stuff.

The game will have players customizing vehicles, like tanks and trucks, with a bunch of different weapons and loadouts, and traversing the desert, fighting monsters, and solving mysteries. It sounds and looks very cool, with very recognizable Toriyama art. Take a look for yourself in the trailer below:

Sand Land is being developed by ILCA, which has worked on a number of high profile titles in the past, such as Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Most recently, the studio worked on One Piece Odyssey, a decent game that’s probably the best One Piece game to exist, as we said in our review.

ILCA also did work on Dragon Quest XI S, another game heavily featuring designs by Toriyama — both DQ11 and One Piece Odyssey visually look a lot like Sand Land, so ILCA certainly has form.

There’s no release date yet for Sand Land, but we know it will be released on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. No Switch, unfortunately, but it’s not unheard of for Bandai Namco games to be released a year or two later on Switch. One Piece Odyssey hasn’t, but there’s probably no reason it couldn’t, eventually.

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