- Interview Location: Anime Expo 2026
- Interview Format: In-Person, One-on-One
Anime Herald: How long hasDemons’ Night Feverbeen in production?
Sohei Niikawa: Production started about two and a half years ago.
Anime Herald: What was the original concept?
Sohei Niikawa: To enjoy evil. That hasn’t changed.
Anime Herald: We began with evil and we built it from there.
Anime Herald: How did you end up choosing the art style?
Sohei Niikawa: We searched for an illustrator whose art style was the best fit for enjoying evil and the story I came up with.
Anime Herald: Oh, so you wrote the story as well?
Sohei Niikawa: Yes.
Anime Herald: I was able to play the demo yesterday, but I was only able to experience a tiny bit of the story. I met the main protagonist Killshiro Katanaka, and the great lord of evil (the kitty Giga Super Death). I was not able to meet the woman on the game poster.
Sohei Niikawa: She is the heroine of the story. She was Killshiro’s classmate in middle school.
Anime Herald: She is an idol now, if I remember correctly.
Sohei Niikawa: Yes. Now they are both adults around thirty years old. She’s an internationally known idol. He works at a questionable company. He’s overworked.
Anime Herald: I remember. He’s a game company programmer. The character that is behind and above the great lord of evil?
Sohei Niikawa: God.
Anime Herald: How long isDemons’ Night Fevergoing to be?
Sohei Niikawa: The game is designed so that you are not supposed to beat it on your first try. You’ll get multiple game overs and you’d run out of time before you complete the game.
And as you make those failed attempts, you become stronger with each attempt. You’ll eventually be able to clear it. With all of those attempts, I’d expect it to take twenty to twenty-five hours to complete it.
Anime Herald: Your minions get stronger when you sacrifice them?
Sohei Niikawa: Yes, but if they are defeated by enemies, they will not recover.
Anime Herald: So, if you sacrifice them, okay. If they get beaten, they’re gone.
Sohei Niikawa: If they are at risk of being killed by enemies, you have to have the determination to kill them yourself.
Anime Herald: What is the beginning of the game like?
Sohei Niikawa: The first time, the player fights Giga Super Death. Since he’s an evil god, he’s powerful and he can easily defeat powerful enemies. We felt that was the best way to make the game mechanics easily understood. In the next battle, Killshiro will have his first battle. We expect that experience will feel like you are stepping into Killshiro’s shoes. Everything is strange and mysterious for Killshiro. We’d expect the player to have the same experience.
Anime Herald: When I played the demo, the first thing I did was recruit powerful characters from the gym. Then, I got into a battle. The characters from the gym were able to deal significant damage, but the main character dealt zero damage. Is that going to change later in the game?
Sohei Niikawa: Yes. At the start, it is expected that he will do little damage. If you train the main character, he’ll be able to do damage.
Anime Herald: Is the heroine (Mary Haley) also a playable character?
Sohei Niikawa: At first, she appears as an enemy.
Anime Herald: Is there a post-game?
Sohei Niikawa: There are different endings, depending on your clear time.
Anime Herald: What is your origin story? How did you decide to enter the game industry?
Sohei Niikawa: Originally, I wanted to become an archaeologist?
Anime Herald: Like Indiana Jones?
Sohei Niikawa: Yes, I wanted to become Indiana Jones. But I decided to enter the game industry after playing Final Fantasy V.
Anime Herald: How old were you when you decided to switch paths?
Sohei Niikawa: I was around twenty years old. I was in my third year of university.
Anime Herald: You had already done some work to become an archaeologist.
Sohei Niikawa: Yes.
Anime Herald: What was your first job in the game industry?
Sohei Niikawa: I can’t program, I can’t draw, and I can’t make music, so my first job was doing promotion and marketing related tasks.
I really wanted to make games, so I kept speaking with all of my superiors. Thanks to that, about a month after joining the company I was made the director of a mahjong game.
Anime Herald: Presumably, the game did well and you’ve been producing and directing games since then?
Sohei Niikawa: It was a very small company, only ten people in total, so I did have to keep doing the business side of things as well. When I proposed games, I would think of them from a business perspective of what elements would sell well.
Since I cannot program or draw, I would write the stories for the games and create the game based off of that story. I would hand that off to the staff to produce the games. After that, I would become the marketing person for that game and I would promote the game to sell it.
Anime Herald: That is the same forDemons’ Night Fever. You wrote it, and now you are here promoting it.
Are there any other games in your history that you hope Western fans will discover for the first time?
Sohei Niikawa: I think the most well known of my games is the Disgaea series.
Anime Herald: Of course.
Sohei Niikawa: I think of that series, the most recommended games would be Disgaea1 and Disgaea 4.
Anime Herald: I remember fighting Baal. A very hard boss. Will there be any equally difficult bosses inDemons’ Night Fever?
Sohei Niikawa: I would say God is a very powerful boss.
Anime Herald: Do you have any questions for us?
Sohei Niikawa: I used to be the CEO of NSJ, Nippon Ichi Software. I quit about four years ago. I’m coming back to America for the first time in a long time. There was a four year blank where I wasn’t active to the outside world. I am curious what they thought about that? Did they think I left the industry?
There’s no other way to put it. When you disappear for four years, people assume you are doing something else with your life.
Sohei Niikawa: In March, I released Etrange Overlord. It was released by NIS America. That was the first game in a really long time. The second game will be Demons’ Night Fever. My personal approach is I don’t like to do interviews or magazine appearances if my game hasn’t been completed. That’s why there was such a long silence before I could come out and speak.
Anime Herald: In America we have an expression: “Can you explain this gap in your resume?”
Four years is a long gap.
Anime Herald: Is there anything else you would like to discuss?
Sohei Niikawa: I left NIS and now I work independently. I feel like I am free to create whatever I want to create. I have the freedom to create unusual games, like Demons’ Night Fever. I would also like to challenge myself to create other forms of media besides games as well?
Anime Herald: What else are you working on?
Sohei Niikawa: Novels, comics, and movies.
Anime Herald: Those are all very challenging. Are any of those near completion?
Sohei Niikawa: The novel is available in Japanese. The same is true for the comic.
Anime Herald: Can you tell us more about them?
Sohei Niikawa: The novel is about Etrange Overlord, as is the comic. I am working on a novel and comic for Demons’ Night Fever.
Anime Herald: I think the most important thing to work on is an artbook forDemons’ Night Fever.
Sohei Niikawa: They were also the Etrange Odyssey illustrator.
Anime Herald: One technical question. Do you like games with linear leveling, where you get slightly more powerful over time, or do you prefer games with power-leveling, such as you can do inDisgaea?
Sohei Niikawa: I would say I like the power-leveling style of leveling up, but I want to note it shouldn’t happen automatically, but rather it should happen if the player can think of a smart efficient way to level up, that’s when they should get that major power boost.
Anime Herald: I understand, I’ve playedDisgaea. Can you power-level inDemons’ Night Fever?
Sohei Niikawa: Yes. There are multiple ways to raise your power level, so I would like the players to think about the best ways to make their teams more powerful.
I would like Demons’ Night Fever to grow into a series. I am looking to make a sequel. Whether or not I can make that sequel depends on the sales, so I appreciate your help in promoting the series.
Anime Herald: Thank you very much.
Sohei Niikawa: Thank you.
