Kingdom Hearts Re:coded

Kingdom Hearts Re:coded came out in 2010 for the Nintendo DS as a reworked, fully playable version of the older Japanese mobile title Kingdom Hearts coded, which never officially made it outside Japan and existed only as an episodic game for the phones of the time, released chapter by chapter during 2008 and 2009. King Mickey and his friends discover Jiminy's old journal, full of mysterious entries from past adventures that keep rewriting themselves, and so they send an artificially created data copy of Sora into its digitally restored world to explore the missing memories, strange anomalies, and so-called bugs from the inside, and to make sense of Jiminy's journal and its entries once again.

The game builds on an action combat system reminiscent of the series' console entries, but noticeably adapted for touch controls and the Nintendo DS's smaller screens – attacks, spells, and movement can all be controlled with a stroke directly on the touch screen, while the level design itself changes procedurally based on the aforementioned bugs, which introduce unexpected traps into the environment as well as helpful bonuses and hidden paths. During play, Sora also collects so-called chips, which he uses between missions to upgrade his stats and abilities, somewhat like the skill systems in later series entries. This is exactly what sets Re:coded apart from most of the series' other handheld entries, which tend to simplify and copy classic console action – here, the emphasis is instead on experimenting with glitches and continually reshaping the game world on the fly, which makes for a markedly different play experience than the rest of the series on home consoles, even though it looks similarly action-driven on the surface.

Why play: Re:coded is aimed mainly at Kingdom Hearts fans who want even the small but story-important piece of the overall puzzle and don't mind controls built around the stylus instead of a classic gamepad.