IGN is currently covering the Konami press conference at TGS. They mention Kawano, but with male pronouns, so I'm hoping I have the gender right.
Anyway, the new game is Time Hollow, for the Nintendo DS. It sounds interesting. I'll just quote the IGN article.
The conference hasn't started yet, but we've found out about a new DS game called Time Hollow; it's an adventure game directed by Junko Kawano. His previous titles include Rhapsodia, Genso Suikoden IV, and Shadow of Memories. Scenario is by Takehiko Hata, a famous author.
You play as a high school student. The day before your 17th birthday, your dad mentions that he has something important to tell you on the following day. That night, you experience a dream. In that dream, you're a child, you're surrounded by fire, and your parents disappear. You wake up and the world has actually changed so that your parents disappered 12 years ago. You come into posession of a mysterious item called the Hollow Pen. This allows you to open holes into the past and change past events. This is the key to figuring out what happened to make the world suddenly change. The main character's name is Horo Tokio.
Gameplay involves gathering information, fixing problems that happened in the past, and "digging" holes into the past to mend the strange events that have surrounded you.
Interesting, indeed. I wonder how it will turn out.The gameplay system works like this: someone changes the past, causing an incident to occur. You speak to people and find out what changed and what needs to be fixed. Then, you use your super magic time pen to fix it.
