Capcom’s Kunitsu-Gami combines tower defense strategy with the heart of community organizing.

when Konitsu-gami: The Way of the Goddess I didn’t care much for the game that debuted at Capcom’s Digital Summer Showcase last year. It looked like a high-end RPG based on Japanese mythology that took some of its art cues from another heavily designed Capcom game, OkamiAlthough I love nothing but RPGs and Japanese folklore, nothing in that initial trailer, nor the trailers that followed, showed me enough of what would make the game interesting.

It wasn’t until I tried the game demo at this year’s Summer Game Fest, and got my hands on a copy, that I finally decided to give it a try. I get it. Damn this game is worth getting into.

in Konitsu-gami: The Way of the GoddessYou play as Suh, the guardian of the priestess Yushiro, whom you must protect and guide through the land and help her purge it of evil demons. In an email to the edge, Art and game director Shuichi Kawata wrote that it was not intentional for the marketing surrounding the game to be Konitsu-gami It made it unclear what kind of game it was.

“This title is a mix of several genres,” Kawata wrote. “We imagined the possibility of a variety of impressions people might have.”

I dare you to guess what kind of game this launch trailer is based on.

Kawata described Konitsu-gami A “virgin” defense game. The gameplay is divided into three parts: day, night, and a base-building cycle. During the day, Suoh wanders the mountain villages that have been ravaged by demonic corruption. He purges the corruption and rescues villagers who will help him in the upcoming night cycle. At night, demons attack, hoping to make their way to Yushiro to kill them. To stop them, Suoh assigns the villagers different jobs, each with their own abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and places them throughout the village to prevent the demons from reaching Yushiro. Once Yushiro reaches the end of the village, it is permanently purged, making it a new base that Suoh and the villagers must repair before moving on to the next location.

I love how Konitsu-gami This is cleverly repeated in tower defense games. You assign roles to villagers using crystals, a resource obtained by defeating demons at night and clearing the village during the day. Not every villager can perform every role, and some roles are non-combatable, though they do have other benefits. During the day’s turn, I might assign two of my people to the role of Thief, sending them out to dig up more crystals or stakes that act as health potions for Suoh and the villagers. But Thieves are useless at night, requiring me to burn precious time and crystals to reset and redeploy them. Sometimes, I might not have enough crystals, having used them all to buy the expensive role of Sumo Wrestler—which attracts the demons’ attention to him and keeps them away from Yushiro—or the Asetic, which uses its power to freeze demons in place, making them easy prey for an archer’s bow or a woodcutter’s axe.

In addition to completing a stage, each battle in the village also comes with a set of special criteria that, if met, will earn you additional rewards. One of the criteria required that I use no more than 1900 crystals. While this seemed trivial at first, achieving this goal became much more difficult as that stage also I was required to give Yushiro 1500 crystals to complete it. Then I was left with only 400 crystals for my villagers – a very tight budget since basic roles like Archer and Woodcutter cost 50 crystals per role, while more powerful roles cost between 150 and 300.

I really enjoyed this tension between strategic placement and deployment. Do I spend crystals to get strong roles, leaving me with fewer defenders? Or do I risk my larger, weaker army being attacked? Konitsu-gami This game is also unique in that it never falls into the trap of being too trivial. In other tower defense games, it’s possible to set your defenses so well that you can just sit back and watch the game itself. But that never happened to me. No matter if I had an abundance of resources and villagers in good locations, I always had to stay on high alert, often saving Yushiro with one of Su’s ultimate attacks. In each level, Konitsu-gami It presented the kind of challenge that would make my puzzle-obsessed, strategy-obsessed mind buzz with excitement.

While it’s not a standout feature, there’s also an interesting piece of narrative in the game. Each villager you rescue has a name and a biography, and I enjoyed reading their stories and how they all intertwined. These people became more than just nameless units to throw at a demonic horde, they became members of a vibrant, living community made up of married couples, family, and friends. It was a beautiful message that reminded me of the old saying “all we have is us.”

in Konitsu-gamiSu is the only one with military training; everyone else is a farmer, a fisherman, a housewife. Rather than wait for outside help or surrender to the demons that are relentless, these ordinary people took up arms to defend their homes and families. In a political climate that seems intent on rolling back protections for women, gays, and people of color, it’s a good message to see. Help isn’t coming—we are the help. It’s a sentiment that Kawata shares as an ordinary person. Konitsu-gami Main topic.

“Challenge is the main driver of this game, we face different circumstances seriously and move forward without fear,” he wrote.

Konitsu-gami: The Way of the Goddess The game is now out on PlayStation, PC, Xbox, and Xbox Game Pass.