Half a year ago, Chinese developer ZlongGames and its subsidiary BlackJack Studio announced Front Mission 2089: Borderscape, a brand new mobile game project that has an IP authorization from Square Enix and takes place in the same world as Square Enix’s classic strategy game Front Mission.
But now, BlackJack Studio has stated on the project’s official website that "after careful evaluation of the current version, they respect the Front Mission series" and “the two sides have canceled the cooperation on the mobile game for the Front Mission IP.”
BlackJack Studio’s announcement for Front Mission 2089: Borderscape
BlackJack Studio did not explain the reasons in detail, but on the mobile game website TapTap, they said it was "in order to have more continuity and control in content creation".
The former Front Mission mobile game’s Weibo has changed its profile photo and deleted all relevant videos. BlackJack Studio also deleted related videos on Bilibili and the associated YouTube and Twitter accounts.
In the meantime, the studio has announced a highly similar mecha game project named Mecharashi, which began a beta test on December 16th that ends on December 29th.
Game graphics of Strategy RPG Mecharashi
From some media reports, we found that people who participated in the two game tests explained that there was not much difference in the two games’ gameplay, but there were some changes in the plot.
The Western styles that were criticized in the previous test for the Front Mission mobile game have been replaced with a more realistic style of mecha and 2D-live characters in Mecharashi.
BlackJack Studio specializes in developing Strategy RPG mobile games and is well-known for Langrisser Mobile and Kalpa of Universe, two mobile game adaptations with authorized IPs.