You really ought to check out the video, because screenshots don’t do justice to this visually impressive game for Android and iOS devices.

On 27 October, 2016 Destiny Child for Kakao was released for South Korean smartphones and tablets, and it shot up to number one in the rankings only four days later. This role playing game puts the player in control of a wide range of some truly unique moe–style characters.

▼ That last one especially seems to be very popular online,
already getting fanart by Japanese fans.

The game was developed by Shift Up and Next Floor utilizing the Live2D method of fluidly merging 2D and 3D animation. When this is applied to the bold artwork of Kim Hyung-Tae (Blade & Soul), the results are quite stunning.

Check it out in this video demonstration: the first video is a promotional trailer for the game and the second shows you several of the characters.

Even if you’re not into this style of moe/doujin ambiguously-aged girls with chests that defy physics, it’s still hard not to get drawn into the visual presentation of Destiny Child. That was most likely a key factor in its rapid rise to popularity in Korea.

And as word of Destiny Child drifted across to Japan the seeds of excitement were quickly sown.

“I want to try Destiny Child. South Korean games look really good.”
“I want it to come to Japan as soon as possible. Kim Hyung-Tae looks to be at the top of his game!”
“The illustrations are just like Japanese moe, but the game mechanics look interesting.”
“No wonder they have such cool-looking games. There are so many pro gamers in Korea, they have to put out good stuff.”

However, looking at the Google Play page for Destiny Child reviews seem to be very polarizing with the game receiving 9,880 five-star reviews and 7,790 one-star reviews with very little in between. Since most reviews are written in Korean, here are the few written in English verbatim: Take them for what their worth.

“greedy lying sack of bs company game is very well made but they constantly screw over their customers. highly recommend that u pass on this game *ex) advertise a 5star u could get if u charge a lil. then after a week of advertising, they nerf the crap out of that 5star a couple days before the designated receive date. btw this just 1 example of many”
[One-star review]

“pedophilia game this is disgusting. this game is about ‘collecting’ the ‘CHILD GIRL’. how can humam being make this kind of game? and most of illustrations are discribe the barely weared child girl. Korean people are insane.”
[One-star review]

“Boobs are great!”
[Five-star review]

As the offended reviewer pointed out, the game is referred to as a Narrative CCG (Collectable Character Game) in which you collect characters each called a “child.” I believe the term “child” is not meant to be taken literally, however, as one of these childs (children?) is a bearded man toting pistols. The game boasts over 500 of these characters to collect and battle with.

▼ If these are children then South Korea must have some seriously lax gun and tobacco laws

▼ Although, granted, “affection for child” isn’t the best tag line they could have used.

As for the finer points of game play, we have no idea because we can’t read Korean. But if you have a handle on that language you might want to give Destiny Child a try. You can download it via Google Play or iTunes. Otherwise you’ll just have to wait for a localized version like the rest of us.

In the meantime, to get your moe fix, feel free to try out the smartphone games where you play as cute anthropomorphized cars, or the one where you play as cute anthropomorphized… mushrooms.

On a final note. I’d like to apologize to all the Beyoncé fans who clicked on this post by accident.

Source: 4Gamer.net via Otaku.com (Japanese)
Featured image: Twitter/@hio_0306
Insert images: YouTube/Destiny Child, YouTube/Beom-Cheol Gim