A few days ago, Kingdom Hearts announced a new upcoming mobile title with the placeholder name "Project Xehanort." As the name suggests, the game will better flesh out the story of Master Xehanort, the Kingdom Hearts series first main antagonist.
To celebrate the title's announcement, the team behind the development of the game hosted a contest that saw fans guess its real name. As of today, however, the competition has ended, and the official title is revealed as Kingdom Hearts Dark Road, which is actually a rather simple name for a Kingdom Hearts spin-off.
The official Project Xehanort Twitter account announced the new title an hour earlier than expected, and in the wake of doing so, changed its name to "Kingdom Hearts Dark Road" to match. Aside from that, however, the account didn't deliver many new details. According to the announcement, fans will have to wait until mid-February before that happens.
That said, the information available now does give decent insight into what fans can expect from the game. Dark Road comes from the same team behind Kingdom Hearts Union X[Cross] so its gameplay will more than likely reflect that - albeit with a few tweaks here and there to compensate for the fact that it will focus on a specific character instead of one custom-made by players.
As for the story, the game centers around Master Xehanort and should thus fill in the blanks missing from the journey that changed him from a simple islander into the most powerful Keyblade wielder ever. It should also flesh out more characters like Eraqus, and the Master of Masters while introducing characters that'll be important later on in the series. A tweet from the Union Cross Twitter account hinted at the latter with artwork showing Young Eraqus and Xehanort hanging out with four other blurred out characters.
The name "Dark Road," while uncharacteristically simplistic, captures the main point behind the game: to flesh out Master Xehanort's story by telling players what exactly caused him to set off on his dark path in the first place. And regardless of the title, a game centered solely around Xehanort is just what the character needed, as while games like Birth by Sleep and 3D had secret reports and events that explored things like Xehanort's motivations and past, they could never really do his character justice.
Kingdom Hearts Dark Road will be available on Amazon, Android, and iOS devices in spring 2020.