Long before Hideo Kojima created the first triple-A walking simulator, he tried to turn sunlight into orbs. The game in question, Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand, is a 2003 Game Boy Advance title in which you play as a vampire-slaying gunslinger. The gun you’re carrying is a “solar-powered” gun that can be charged using a photometric sensor mounted on the cartridge by physically standing in the sun. This was 13 years before Pokemon Go was released. Unfortunately, Boktai’s debut didn’t result in city parks and rooftops being flooded with throngs of GBA-wielding undead assassins. But it was a fun gimmick, and the game itself is good enough to pull it off – an isometric dungeon crawler where you have to find a vampire’s coffin and drag it to the surface for cleaning.
Three sequels followed, and then Daddy Konami announced the end of the series. But Boktai lives in shape Kura5: Bonds of the Immortalsa non-canonical fan game that is a remix of the first game with one of its successors, Lunar Knights. It’s a free download, so the elderly built-in photometric functionality is gone, but the solar charging mechanism has been rebuilt to work with a real-world online weather tracking system. Version 1.0 was released this month – here’s the trailer.
Here are some notes from the ChickenHat developer.
It’s neither a full remake nor a sequel, but a remix of both familiar Boktai basics as well as recent elements that aim to recreate the magic we’ve all come to love about the series. The Kura5 weather system knows where you are in the real world, so there’s no need for a sun sensor. Game events may even play out differently depending on whether you play in the dim or in the featherlight… And that’s just the beginning!
In the game you have two characters: Annie the cowgirl and Emil the vampire swordsman. You can switch between them, playing during the day or after dim. That’s right, Kura5 can be played 24/7, but if you prefer, you can turn off the weather tracker/day tracker and play offline.
If you’re interested in overlapping game design with a sundial, you can also check out Kara Stone’s solar-powered server.
