Interview: The SEGA Veteran Behind Get Wrapped Up on SANGOKUSHI BOND and the Future of Auto Battlers

I think there are two main reasons.

The first is the nature of PC as a platform. Compared to joysticks or gamepads, mouse and keyboard controls are not always ideal for highly reflex-based action games. But they are very well suited to games built around clicking, selecting, positioning, and making strategic decisions. In that sense, I think auto battlers and strategy-focused games are a natural fit for PC players.

The second reason is Steam's growth as a major gaming platform. As Steam continues to expand its position in the market, a wide range of players, from casual to hardcore, are now playing PC games. Within that, I also feel that some casual players are moving over from mobile games.

Highly action-oriented games can be difficult to play while doing something else, but auto battlers and strategy games can be enjoyed in a more relaxed way, with time to think, watch, and make decisions. It is also fun to watch the chaos unfold, and we hope the streaming community will enjoy chatting with their audience about strategy and then watching the results onscreen together. I think that play style fits very well with many PC users today.

Since I come from an arcade background, I want to create a game that feels good to play first and foremost on PC, using a mouse and keyboard. In that sense, I believe SANGOKUSHI BOND responds well to this trend, because it is easy to understand but still offers deep strategic gameplay.

Our goal is to create a competitive game that can continue for a long time.

One of the things we are very conscious of with SANGOKUSHI BOND is making the battlefield itself exciting to watch. Even users who have never played the game before should be able to enjoy watching the battle and feel the excitement of what is happening on the battlefield. The battle begins at a more thoughtful, slower pace, where players carefully read the situation and make strategic decisions, and then builds toward an explosive finale as the battlefield comes alive. I believe this kind of viewing experience could bring something fresh and different to tournament culture. 

I personally love esports and tournament culture, and for those scenes to truly thrive, the competition needs to feel fair. If the outcome is influenced by differences in what players own or how much they have spent, the excitement is weakened. That is why we want SANGOKUSHI BOND to be a “buy-to-play title” where players can get excited together through competition around pure strategy.

We want victory to come from tactical decision-making, reading the opponent, and playing well – not from how much a player has paid.

If we can gain many fans, I believe those players will support our title in many different ways. Ultimately, we would be very happy if as many players as possible joined us and enjoyed the game together.

There are three major principles I carry over from arcade game design.

The first is the sense of pacing. In arcades, games are often designed around short play sessions, represented by the classic idea of “100 Japanese yen for three minutes.” Because of that background, I always think carefully about how to keep each match from becoming too long, while making the play experience compact, dense, and exciting.

The second is the awareness of spectators. In arcades, there is often someone watching from behind the player. Because of that, I naturally think about how the game looks to the audience as well. I want to create clear moments where spectators can react — moments where they might say, “I didn’t know you could place units like that,” or “You can actually win with that kind of deck?” Those moments are extremely important for a competitive game.

The third is whether the player can feel cool while playing. SANGOKUSHI BOND is not a highly action-based game, so in terms of physical movement or flashy action, it is different from an action game. However, I believe there is another kind of coolness in strategic play – the coolness of building a deck, reading the opponent’s deck, changing tactics during the match, and making smart decisions under pressure.

In that sense, with SANGOKUSHI BOND, I want to express the kind of coolness you see in strong chess or mahjong players: not flashy movement, but deep thinking, reading the opponent, and making the right move at the right time.

For onboarding, we are developing the tutorial for the official release. And, we will keep it practical, focused, and easy to follow.

In deck-based games especially, building your first deck is very important. That is why we plan to provide not only an explanation of the basic rules, but also a flow where players can obtain the cards they need to build their first deck.

For battle scenes, we are also considering features that allow players to increase the pace or skip certain parts once they become more familiar with the game. Basically, we want to design battles in a way that helps players understand the game while also letting them experience emotional ups and downs. At the same time, players have many different play styles, so we want to prepare systems that allow them to play at a comfortable pace, including skip features.

Another important point is that, for SANGOKUSHI BOND and for Get Wrapped Up Inc as a company, we see game development as a form of co-creation with players. We are constantly thinking about how to connect players with each other and how to connect players with the development team.

To support that, we plan to actively follow Japanese, Chinese, and English communities on Discord, with channel structures that allow players in each language to have meaningful discussions. We also want to have community staff who can flexibly respond to players’ conversations, questions, and feedback.

Our biggest goal is to gain fans, so we want to build a system that values real communication with players. Of course, we will also share official updates and information through platforms like X and YouTube, and we hope players will enjoy those as part of the overall experience as well.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms era is based on Chinese history, so for us as a Japanese development team, it was very important to approach it with respect, while also interpreting it in our own way and translating it into a game.

Because the setting is based on history from around the year 200, we allowed ourselves to stylize and dramatize certain elements for gameplay, while keeping respect for the source history at the core. For example, tactics such as fire attacks, water-based strategies, damage-based tactics, and army-wide commands are all part of how we express large-scale battlefield logic within the game.

One of the key challenges was turning those ideas into systems that strategy fans would immediately understand and enjoy. For example, we built the game around strategic relationships such as the rock-paper-scissors dynamic between cavalry, archers, and spearmen, so that players who love strategy can feel, “Yes, that makes sense.”

At the same time, we were also conscious of making the game approachable for global players who may not be familiar with the Three Kingdoms, so that even without prior historical knowledge, they can naturally understand the appeal of each commander and the meaning of each tactic while playing.

We also created more than 100 commander cards with brand-new hand-drawn illustrations specifically for this game. For each commander, we wanted players to feel attached to them, so we carefully built each card with that character’s historical episodes, tactics that make players say “Oh, that’s interesting,” and voice assignments that fit the personality of the commander.

Our policy was to put soul into every card. We hope players will look forward to discovering each commander and feeling that personality through the game.

Our goal is simple: we want to be a strategy gamer's next favorite competitive game.

We have great respect for companies like Riot Games and Supercell, and we want to learn from them while building something with our own identity. I have been in the game industry for a long time, and in the arcade space, I was fortunate to have opportunities to create games with real impact. But when it comes to competitive games for console and PC audiences, there are many great companies ahead of us. We want to study what they do well, while adding our own unique flavor.

The reason I love competitive games so much is that one match can create a wide range of emotions toward another person — sometimes positive, sometimes negative, and sometimes both. And games allow that to happen in a very casual and accessible way. I think that is something truly special.

In everyday life, it is rare to have your emotions move so much toward another person in such a short amount of time. But in competitive games, when you play match after match, those emotions can eventually become friendship.

“You’re strong.” “So are you.”

“Not bad.” “Right back at you.”

I think moments like that are incredibly emotional and powerful.

Get Wrapped Up Inc. was created together with GENDA Inc., one of the leading arcade and entertainment venue operators. Our vision is to connect players through Steam and console platforms, and in the future, also connect those experiences with real-world venues.

By creating more of those connections, we want to bring players together, connect players with the development team, and build new bonds through games, not only through matches themselves, but also through small moments of recognition, follow-ups after battles, shared rankings, replays, and eventually real-world touchpoints such as arcade check-ins. That is what Get Wrapped Up Inc. is about – a company that creates bonds.

Get Wrapped Up Inc. is still a young company – we were founded in May 2025. So our first goal is to release a title that players can truly enjoy, and to have as many people as possible become fans of our game.

As a startup, we are able to develop efficiently, and our company costs are not extremely high. Because we are challengers, our first priority is not to maximize monetization, but to earn players’ trust. We want to carefully deliver a game that feels fair and satisfying to players. For a competitive game, that means removing paid power advantages from the core experience.

Another reason is that we wanted to make a competitive game where victory is not decided only by reflexes, speed, or intense concentration. In highly action-based games, veteran players can sometimes struggle to keep up with younger players in terms of physical reaction speed. With SANGOKUSHI BOND, we wanted to create a game where experience, reading the opponent, and decision-making can matter as much as reflexes – a game that really makes your brain sweat.

Also, many veteran players have limited time and may not want every match to become a long commitment. That is why we focused the experience into roughly 10-minute battles. Players can feel the excitement of winning and losing in a short amount of time, and then naturally want to play a second or third match.

By offering the game in this form – fair, tactical, compact, and repeatable – we believe SANGOKUSHI BOND can create a clear position for itself in the market. It is not about who pays more or who reacts faster. It is about who reads the battlefield better and makes the right decisions.

I think that when a game has many players, and they feel satisfied with the experience, the next thing they want is a deeper sense of connection.

Players begin to want to play together with friends, or even team up with someone who used to be their rival. I believe that kind of emotional and social connection will become an important direction for strategy and auto battler games going forward.

In response to that, I think we will see more systems such as GvG-style modes, or battles where two players can participate together in a single match. But I also think each game needs to evolve in its own way, based on what makes that game fun at its core.

I also believe the visual presentation of the genre will continue to evolve. Many indie titles are already exploring interesting systems, and as stronger examples emerge, I think the genre will also move toward more powerful battlefield presentation – perhaps closer to the scale and impact of titles like ”Total War”.