Game Freak is making a magical girl game powered by real weather

Game Freak announced a new free-to-play mobile game today called Ame nochi Hare Onna (Rainy Day, Sunny Girl), which ties its gameplay directly to live Japanese weather forecasts. The studio is developing the iOS and Android title in partnership with Chronogate. It's scheduled for release this winter.

According to the official press release, the game centers on magical girls called Hare Onna and their cloud-like familiars, Kumorin.

Tied to the local forecast

The core hook relies on real-world data. Game Freak partnered with the Japanese forecasting company Weathernews to feed live meteorological updates into the app. If it rains in your actual neighborhood, the game changes to reflect that reality. They haven't detailed exactly how the precipitation alters the mechanics yet, but the premise involves using those weather conditions as magic to clear up people's moods across modern Japan.

The teaser trailer shows bright, anime-style key art of Himawari walking under a clear blue sky, contrasting with the gloomy weather she presumably has to fix. The animation looks clean. It leans heavily into the standard magical girl aesthetic.

Shigeru Ohmori is directing and producing the project. He previously directed Pokémon Sun and Moon as well as Pokémon Sword and Shield, so he's stepping away from the mainline monster catching for a moment. Katsutaka Suginaka from Chronogate is handling the scenario direction. The voice cast includes Hiyori Kono as the lead magical girl Himawari Harewatari, and Yuki Nagano as her familiar Pon Arai.

Life outside of Pokémon

Game Freak is obviously known for Pokémon, but the Tokyo studio regularly builds original properties to test new ideas. They run an internal initiative called the Gear Project, which lets developers pitch and build non-Pokémon games during quieter production periods.

That initiative gave us Drill Dozer on the Game Boy Advance in 2005. It produced the rhythm platformer HarmoKnight on the 3DS in 2012. Pocket Card Jockey remains one of the best solitaire hybrids ever made, and it recently got a second life on Apple Arcade. Ame nochi Hare Onna fits right into that tradition of weird, experimental side projects, even if it's targeting the mobile market instead of dedicated Nintendo hardware.

The studio is hosting a livestream tonight at 7 PM Japan Standard Time from the Weathernews studio to show off more of the game. They will also have a playable booth at the Tokyo Game Show starting on September 17, which should clarify how the weather integration actually functions in practice. The official X account is already live with the teaser trailer.

The heavy reliance on Japanese weather infrastructure makes a global release complicated. I hope this comes out in English speaking territories! It would be a shame to miss out on a bizarre Game Freak experiment just because my local weather app doesn't plug into their servers.