Game Director Yuji Naka Was Removed from Balan Wonderworld 6 Months Prior to Release

Yuji Naka reveals Balan Wonderworld's development issues and his conflict with Square Enix in an explosive series of tweets.

Posted By | On 29th, Apr. 2022

Balan Wonderworld_11

Square Enix’s 3D platformer Balan Wonderworld was easily one of the worst games to come out last year, which was more than a bit surprising considering the interesting premise of the game and Sonic developer Yuji Naka helming the project. While Naka confirmed that he had parted ways with Square Enix after the game’s disastrous launch, he recently took to Twitter to reveal that he was actually removed from the project a whole 6 months before the release of the game.

In a long Twitter thread written in Japanese, Naka explained that he had filed a lawsuit against Square Enix for his untimely removal from the project, and now that the proceedings are over, he is free to share additional details on the matter (he was also apparently banned by Square Enix from liking and sharing any posts on social media).

Naka says that Square Enix knew about the rocky state of the game at launch, but went ahead and released it anyway. Developer Arzest had submitted the game’s final build without fixing many of the bugs, even when Naka was pushing for additional polishing. Upon his removal from the project months before release, Naka also tried to negotiate with his business partners to allow him to fix issues until the game went public, sadly to no avail.

Naka also explained how Square Enix used rearranged music from a YouTuber for promotional purposes, instead of original tracks. He insists that an original game should feature original music since it’s an important aspect of the presentation that fans are instantly drawn towards. Furthermore, he also shared how the game’s producer continued to impose tight deadlines, to the detriment of the development team.

Naka further goes on to talk about how he is sorry for the version of the game that fans got to play, and concludes that developer Arzest and Square Enix “are companies that don’t care about games and game fans.”

Here are the translated tweets (courtesy of Twitter user @cheesemeister3k):


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