Kess Entertainment will release licensed games tied to anime properties One Piece and Hunter x Hunter, video game properties Street Fighter and Sonic, and an original in the coming months.
One Piece: Luffy’s Bento Panic, planned for Fall release, is a party game for three to nine players at $20 to $25. “You’re trying to get the most food sitting at the table at one of the after-celebration feasts for One Piece,” Kess Entertainment’s Anthony Thorp told us. “It’s a game where you’re going to be pointing at the center of the table, or your neighbor’s, trying to snatch food from them or from the middle, and eat it before they snatch it from you. Then, every once in a while, Luffy will come, and he’ll take whoever has the most meat, which is worth the most points.”
Hunter x Hunter, planned for summer release, is “a crunchier dice-rolling game,” Thorp said. “You’re trying to get through the first Hunter exam with you and four players. It’s a four-player cooperative game, and you’re going to be rolling dice against the other competitors, trying to knock them out and survive to the end trying to get your Hunter’s license.”
Kess’s Street Fighter V: Champion Edition is the retail (including mass) version of Kolossal Games’ Gamefound version, which included miniatures. “There’s no minis inside [the retail version],” Thorp said. “Instead, you get standees; it’s got the 8 World Warriors that we picked as our characters for this version of the game. It’s got all the other content.” This will be a Summer 2024 release, at $50 MSRP.
Sonic Speed Battle is a $20 card game planned for Fall 2024. “This is a more modern focus as opposed to the Sonic world’s classic characters,” Thorp told us. “It’s in line with the Sonic 3 movie coming out. Shadow’s a big, prominent feature of that, so we wanted to feature him here along with some of the other new characters. It’s a game that has one deck of cards, but you can play three different games, kind of inspired from the Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, that era of Sonic.
Kess is planning a Kickstarter for Poppo’s Perfect Playdate: The Game, an original. It’s a light card game about building the perfect playdate with friends. It will likely ship in late 2024 or early 2025. Source: ICv2
