Overview
Tower of Fantasy is the first major game developed by Hotta Studio, a subsidiary of Perfect World Games. Released globally in August 2022, Tower of Fantasy is an open-world MMO RPG with anime-styled visuals, a sci-fi setting, and a free-to-play model with gacha character acquisition. It is the studio's foundational title and the predecessor to Neverness to Everness.
Tower of Fantasy directly informs NTE in two ways: technically, its scalable cross-platform rendering established the foundation that NTE expands on; and culturally, eight tracks from its soundtrack appear in NTE as part of the launch music collaboration, playing through the in-car radio and Walkman features.
Tower of Fantasy at a Glance
Detail | Value |
|---|---|
Developer | |
Publishers | Perfect World Games (China); Level Infinite (global) |
Genre | Open-world MMO RPG |
Setting | Sci-fi planet (Aida); later cyberpunk city (Mirroria) |
Original Launch | China: 2021; Global: August 2022 |
Platforms | PC (Windows), iOS, Android, PlayStation 4 |
Monetization | Free-to-play with gacha character and weapon banners |
Connection to Neverness to Everness
Technical Inheritance
Hotta Studio's work on scalable cross-platform rendering for Tower of Fantasy is directly inherited by Neverness to Everness. Tower of Fantasy launched simultaneously on PC, iOS, Android, and PS4, requiring the studio to engineer rendering, networking, and progression systems that scaled across the full hardware range. NTE extends this foundation by adding PlayStation 5 (and Pro), Mac, and cross-platform play with cross-save.
Urban Open World Experience
Mirroria, the cyberpunk city added to Tower of Fantasy after its initial launch, was the studio's first major open-world urban environment. Hotta Studio developers have stated that designing Mirroria and seeing positive player response inspired them to make a fully urban-focused open-world RPG. NTE's Hethereau represents the natural extension of that work, building an entire game around the urban supernatural premise rather than treating the city as one zone among many.
Development Speed
The roughly year-and-a-half experience of developing urban content for Tower of Fantasy helped Hotta Studio complete Neverness to Everness in less than two years from first reveal to global launch. This is unusually fast for an open-world action RPG of NTE's scope, and is a direct dividend of the prior project's investment in scalable urban rendering, NPC behavior systems, and cross-platform tooling.
Music Collaboration
Eight tracks from the Tower of Fantasy soundtrack are included in Neverness to Everness as part of the launch music collaboration:
Chocolate
Go, Chaser
In The Light
Meant To Be
New World
The Seed of Dreams
Mirafleur Hall
A Midsummer Night's Dream
These tracks play through the in-car radio while driving vehicles through Hethereau and through the Walkman portable music player when exploring on foot. The selection covers signature themes from across Tower of Fantasy's content cycles, ranging from the early-area atmosphere of Chocolate to late-area themes like Mirafleur Hall.
Why the Crossover
Featuring Tower of Fantasy music in NTE serves several purposes:
Reinforces Hotta Studio's identity as the studio behind both games. The two share a developer signature even though they have different settings and play styles.
Gives Tower of Fantasy fans a tangible reason to drop into NTE. Players returning from the studio's previous work get a familiar audio anchor in an otherwise new environment.
Provides launch-day soundtrack variety. Combined with the Persona 5 tracks, the in-car radio and Walkman have a substantial library at launch without requiring NTE to commission new music for every station.
Demonstrates the technology that makes the radio and Walkman possible. Both features were tested as design ideas during the late stages of Tower of Fantasy and matured into core features for NTE.
Differences From Neverness to Everness
Despite shared development DNA, the two games are distinct in genre, tone, and design:
Aspect | Tower of Fantasy | Neverness to Everness |
|---|---|---|
Setting | Post-apocalyptic planet Aida + cyberpunk Mirroria | Modern supernatural metropolis (Hethereau) |
Combat | Weapon-swap MMO action | Esper-swap action with reaction system |
Gacha | Standard banner pulls | Scarborough Fair board game (no 50/50) |
Co-Op | MMO instances and shared world | Cross-platform co-op with stat equalization |
Tone | Sci-fi adventure | Supernatural urban fantasy / cosmic horror |