Chaos Zero Nightmare Interview – Director Discusses Roguelike Gameplay, Mid-Core Aims, and LEGO Sets

Smilegate is about to release Chaos Zero Nightmare, a brand new dark fantasy roguelike RPG, challenging the crowded free-to-play game market.

The game will release tomorrow, October 22, for iOS, Android, and PC, and not only did we try it briefly at Tokyo Game Show 2025, but we also talked with Executive Director Kim Hyung Suk to hear more about what the game is all about.

I always start interviews about this kind of game with a question that may seem rather harsh, but is also inevitable, and it’s what the developer believes sets this Chaos Zero Nightmare apart in a market increasingly saturated by RPGs with similar business models, similar structures and tropes, inevitable casts of cute girls, and very little room for newcomers to be successful.

Kim admitted that, indeed, this isn’t an easy market, and there are games that are failing, but he feels confident that focusing on the right RPG elements will help his game stand out in a crowd of games in the mobile space that focus on other aspects over the RPG gameplay. In Chaos Zero Nightmare, the roleplay elements are at the core of the gameplay.

He also believes that the dopamine involved with the roguelike aspect of the game, with the Save Data aspect that carries into your next play, is a very strong aspect of the game.

He sees the characters of the game like a LEGO collection that you can build up. Each character is like an individual LEGO set that you can mix and match together to create your own result.

According to Kim, the whole development team placed a lot of its focus on the gameplay, and Chaos Zero Nightmare is not like other games that tend to focus on more superficial aspects.

Many titles focus more on how cute and collectible the character cast is over the gameplay, and users tend to judge such games only on these aspects, with the gameplay basically losing importance and becoming just a standardized way to acquire currency to roll for the next character on the gacha.

When I asked Kim whether he believes his team’s gameplay focus can break through this issue, he told me that he’s indeed confident that it can. He actually believes that Chaos Zero Nightmare can feel like a triple-A gameplay experience.

With the increased competition not only from China, but also from other parts of the world, developers had to strive to improve the quality and production values of the game and change the way they work on the development itself to go beyond a “standard” experience that nowadays is easy to achieve.

That’s why it was very important to push for high-quality production values like animation, visuals, and the feelings you get when you get a new character and when you build it up.

Interestingly, Kim mentioned that roguelike games started to be very popular about a decade ago, especially within the indie scene, but nowadays, even bigger games include such elements often as side content. On the other hand, it was important to him to include the roguelike aspect as a core mechanic.

Interestingly, he mentioned HoyoVerse’s Zenless Zone Zero as an example, with its roguelike mode that wasn’t well received by players. He has paid attention to how that went to avoid making the same mistakes.

As a result, the developers have been working very hard to create a game that can satisfy both roguelike enthusiasts and people who usually aren’t into that type of gameplay.

Nowadays, games usually target either super-hardcore gamers or casuals, but he’d like to cater to gamers in the middle ground, whom he defined “mid-core.”

He’s aware that it’s challenging to achieve that, but it’s a niche that he believes isn’t served well. Mixing roguelike gameplay, which usually caters to hardcore players, and gacha, which is associated with casual players, is his way to court the “mid-core” gamer.

Kim reiterated the LEGO analogy, mentioning that for him, the most fun part is the deck-building system that lets you build your characters like a LEGO set, and carry it over via the Save Data to the next play. You can also have different kinds of LEGO sets that you can play around it and create focused ones for different parts of the game.

This is, according to the Director, an experience that he’s confident players won’t find anywhere else.

Interestingly, while the game is initially releasing on mobile platforms and PC, Kim confirmed that the team intends to try to launch on consoles as well at a later time. They have been preparing for this possibility for a while.

While the time we had to play Chaos Zero Nightmare at Tokyo Game Show was limited, it certainly felt like a lot of thought went into the gameplay system.

The roguelike aspect of the game is very fleshed out and complex, with a variety of layered systems overlapping and interacting with each other, with an apparent depth that you often don’t see even in non-free-to-play games in the genre.

It’s likely that many will approach this game attracted by the usual elements like attractive characters and gacha, but I do believe that there’s more to it than meets the eye.

Whether this will be enough to set Chaos Zero Nightmare apart and carry it to success and to conquer the mid-core crowd it’s aiming for, it remains to be seen.

The promise is there, and tomorrow you’ll be able to check it out and answer the question for yourself.

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If you’d like to hear more from Tokyo Game Show 2025, you can enjoy our interview with Final Fantasy VII Remake series Director Naoki Hamaguchi, one with Urban Games Publishing Manager Nicolas Heini about Transport Fever 3, and a chat with the developers of Crusader Kings 3’s expansion All Under Heaven.

We also heard from Final Fantasy XIV Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida, Monster Hunter Wilds producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, and Director Yuya Tokuda about the collaboration between their games.