Tokyo Game Show has always been a stage for the unexpected, and few reveals captured that chaotic spirit in 2025 quite like Let It Die: Inferno. Developed by Supertrick Games and published by GungHo Online Entertainment, the sequel was officially unveiled at the event, plunging players into a new vision of survival action that is harder, stranger, and more theatrical than ever. Where the original Let It Die challenged fans to climb the Tower of Barbs, Inferno flips the premise entirely, sending them down into the Hell Gate — a shifting labyrinth of grotesque enemies, environmental traps, and rival players. With Uncle Death once again presiding over the madness, Cubed3’s Adam Riley sat down with the team at TGS. Both director Hideyuki Shin and Uncle Death himself shared in great detail about pushing the franchise’s foundations into fresh territory, harnessing new console technology to realise environments, and character designs that were once beyond reach.
Interpreter: May I ask you both to introduce yourselves?
Adam Riley, Director at Cubed3: My name is Adam Riley and I work at a media website in the UK called Cubed3. I’m one of the directors there. I’ve been doing this for about 22 years now.
Hideyuki Shin, Director of Let It Die: Inferno at Supertrick Games: That’s long! I’ve also been doing this job for over 20 years.
Adam Riley: I have respect for that.
Uncle Death: I’ve only been doing this job, nothing else! My job is…to be Uncle Death!
Hideyuki Shin: I’m the development director for Let It Die: Inferno. My main job is to pray!
Adam Riley: Play?
Hideyuki Shin: No, PRAY!
Adam Riley: Pray that everyone plays the game?!
Hideyuki Shin: The prayer is a little bit different… My main job is to pray — to hope that everyone can enjoy the game, and that we can create something fun, funny, amusing…for everybody. That’s the main prayer.
Uncle Death: I’m Uncle Death. My main job is to annoy Shin san and irritate him. That’s my main job!
Adam Riley: Like a real uncle with a nephew…
Uncle Death: Hahaha, nooo, not like that! Actually, believe it or not, we’re not real uncle and nephew… that’s not our real relationship. Shin san is creating games, right? It’s a difficult job, and sometimes he just wants to quit, so I want to give… ‘moral support’.
Adam Riley: Ohh, moral support.
Uncle Death: Yes, so he doesn’t quit! Since we’re here, I’m being nice and the drinks are not spiked…but, otherwise, his drink would have vinegar in it!
Adam Riley: This is my bottle, hands off…!
Uncle Death: The logic behind it is that once he’s been made to drink the vinegar and spit it out, he thinks, “Oh no, this is so difficult! I should get back to game development, since it’s easier than this!”
Adam Riley: Clever!
Uncle Death: I do things that make his life sooooo much harder that he goes to game development as the easier way out.
Adam Riley: Genius!
ALL: *laughter*
Adam Riley: That’s the sort of entertainment and fun you try to bring into the game experience?
Hideyuki Shin: Exactly. The game aims to incorporate the same feel as the banter we’re having right now.
Adam Riley: Do you encourage gamers to participate in the same sort of way?
Uncle Death: Recently, there has been a rise in serious games – and nothing against serious games, as they have their own place – but to counter-balance, people need games of this feeling… a little crazy, little teasing style games. Personally, I love Super Mario.
Adam Riley: Same here!
Uncle Death: Woohoo! (*imitating Mario’s famous cheer*)
Adam Riley: Do you take any influences from the older games to bring into your new game?
Hideyuki Shin: We’ve carried ideas from the previous game into the new one. The spirit of the Mario games is essentially the same.
Adam Riley: So you would say that Let It Die is similar to Super Mario Bros.?
Uncle Death: Well, in Mario Bros. you also have mushrooms… and in Let It Die you also have mushrooms!
Adam Riley: Oh yes, and you kill things! You break things, kill things… I can see the similarities…
Uncle Death: It’s a bit like Mario, Let It Die…
Adam Riley: Hmm, definitely… Now, if you’ve been working for over 20 years as a director, what other experiences have you had in the past that have perhaps helped influence your new game?
Hideyuki Shin: Of course, I’ve picked up things and used my experiences, but more than that, this new game is more based on experiences from talking to different people, and hearing, “I went here, I did this and it was funny!” which then led to us thinking it would make a good concept. That made us want to make it into and game, and how this new game came to be. Did you do the shocking from hell experience in the TGS booth today? (sitting on a chair that gave electric shocks at random times)
Adam Riley: Yes, I was like, “What is going on?!”
Hideyuki Shin: We put a LOT of emphasis on real experiences.
Adam Riley: It makes it a lot more immersive!
Uncle Death: It’s closer to 4DX in movies. We wanted that experience for the demo, so we translated it as giving people a small electric shock through their chair whilst playing at TGS! If you think that’s bad, we’ve trialled the electric shock over 100 times to perfect it…
Adam Riley: I can imagine the first person’s reaction until you gradually reduced the impact! I imagine the first tester being like in those old school cartoons where someone gets electrocuted, they’ve suddenly got spikey hair and their face turns black!
ALL: *laughs*
Adam Riley: You mentioned how you get experiences and feedback from people, but how do you get that feedback from gamers and those that played the original Let It Die?
Hideyuki Shin: Of course, past games influence us, but more than that, real conversations and experiences inspire ideas. Things people tell us, places we’ve been, unexpected events – those real‑world moments often spark concepts that we bring into the game.
Uncle Death: We look at comments we get from the community and also do online streaming where there are comments under those videos. If there’s a really nice idea seen in the comments, we’ll be like, “Oh yeah, we’ll do this!” Immediately, on the spot. That’s how we incorporate the feedback of users.
Adam Riley: Do you then give a credit to the user that came up with the best idea?
Uncle Death: Well, rather than take the best idea, we kind of take the opinions of people and use those to form new ideas. We’ve also done things like user-testing, where gamers find bugs in a stream, for example, and our team found the idea to be fun. The person found the bug whilst streaming the game, so we started supporting that streamer so that when it was fixed and he was streaming again, we’d give out special items to help him and support that particular run, so we try to reward people in that way.
Adam Riley: That’s really good, working together – synergy with fans. It shows a level of respect to those playing the game. Do you ever get involved with the play-testers yourself on the live streams, as well?
Hideyuki Shin: Not together with the users, as such. We do livestream our own challenges in real time. It’s another way to share the experience and keep the community engaged.
Adam Riley: The series has had different entries — the original Let It Die, then Deathverse, which felt like a “1.5,” so is Inferno a proper sequel?
Hideyuki Shin: Yes, we’ve had Let It Die, then Deathverse, which was set in the same world but with a different gameplay style. This new title, the third one, actually is a direct sequel to the first one.
Adam Riley: What lessons did you learn from the very first Let It Die that shaped Inferno? Maybe even things that couldn’t be developed due to hardware limitations; things that can be realised properly now?
Uncle Death: We looked at what didn’t work in the original and made sure to improve it here. Back then, technology and hardware policies limited what we could achieve. For example, we wanted to include PvE elements but couldn’t. Now, with stronger hardware and more freedom, we’ve been able to integrate those features and achieve this goal. It’s something we wanted in both the original and Deathverse, and we’ve managed this time to apply them successfully in Inferno.
Adam Riley: Ah yes, so the original vision can be fully implemented now. Were there any things that you regret from the first game that you’ve been able to change this time round?
Uncle Death: The biggest issue was the rating in Japan, more than something with the game in general. It received a “Cero Z” rating, the highest restriction, which meant players needed credit card verification.
Adam Riley: It limited the audience? All that hard work, it must have been difficult.
Uncle Death: Yes, so the goal of reaching many people wasn’t reached. Only about 2% of the people in Japan could buy it! That was really difficult, so this is something we definitely kept in mind this time, but we didn’t want to compromise on the crazy aspect, so we had to work hard to lower the rating slightly to make it more accessible, while keeping the crazy atmosphere and unpredictable spirit intact. It’s something we’ve had to tell the global audience: don’t be worried about the fact that the rating has come down, since the craziness and eccentricity of the game remains intact.
Adam Riley: How do you balance that with the rating? Do you have to have regular check-ups to see where it falls in terms of the rating line, what boxes it ticks, etc? Do you know where the line is and try to get as close as possible with breaking the threshold of the next rating up?
Uncle Death: We have a lot of experience now of knowing where the line for Cero Z is, so we skate it very finely, squeezing in as much as possible whilst still remaining under it! We are confident about keeping the game wild but still accessible.
Adam Riley: Is there any particular reason why you’ve focused on PS5 and PC first?
Uncle Death: These two platforms were simply chosen because straight away they can deliver the vision that we wanted for Inferno… That said, we love Switch 2 and definitely want to port Inferno there. In our company, most of the people actually play Switch 2 games!
Adam Riley: The audience is expanding. Nintendo is no longer just families and children. They have Yakuza and the new Resident Evil is coming, so darker games fit, too. Have you actually had chance to work with the Switch 2 development kit to see its capabilities? I ask because some developers haven’t received a kit because of early shortages of dev kits.
Uncle Death: There is a team that does approvals and checks out things like that. We’ve already had this highly specialised team test the performance on Switch 2, and you’ll be pleased to know Inferno runs fine. We’ve been given the okay that Let It Die: Inferno can work on Switch 2!
Adam Riley: Very good, that’s great to hear! Now, in terms of Let It Die as a franchise, what are your plans for the future? Many companies now do multimedia projects – anime, merchandise and movie spin-offs, etc. Do you hope to expand the Let It Die universe in a similar way?
Uncle Death: Absolutely, I want to be in a movie!
Adam Riley: I think Uncle Death, you look like a rapper or hip hop star. You just need a big chain around your neck, wearing your cap on the side instead of forward like now…
*Uncle Death moves his cap, as suggested*
Adam Riley: Oh, yes, perfect!!
Uncle Death: There should be a movie on me, definitely. Please look forward to “Let It Die: The Movie”!
Adam Riley: Maybe it could be called “NEVER Let It Die”! A movie sounds good, but maybe even an anime where you start with Uncle Death, but then get to meet Auntie Death, little nephew and niece deaths… The whole Death family, with its background story, and so on!
Uncle Death: I will take notes, thank you! That kind of expansion would be exciting.
Adam Riley: I’m actually now picturing Grasshopper Manufacture when I see the Uncle Death character. You know Goichi Suda-san? His style with No More Heroes… I picture the Uncle Death imagery on the special t-shirt you gave me as being very cool, and I see lots of potential for expansion in their sort of style!
Uncle Death: I don’t know if you realised, but Grasshopper split in two, so Supertrick is one part of that separation! He (Shin san) was doing No More Heroes in the past!
Adam Riley: Oh, really? I didn’t know that! I just felt the character style was quite similar to something like Travis Touchdown.
Hideyuki Shin: Well, at the root, they are actually kind of the same…so the graphical and character styles are similar, as well. There is no question it’s well suited since it’s like the same thing. There is a synergy between Uncle Death and Grasshopper’s style with Travis Touchdown.
Adam Riley: Do you still sometimes work together with Suda51?
Hideyuki Shin: We used to work together, of course, but we’re not collaborating right now, yet saying that, of course we’re open to future partnerships. There is nothing we don’t want to collaborate on! Right now, though, our top priority must be a Hello Kitty collaboration…
Adam Riley: Sorry?
Uncle Death: Yes, Hello Kitty!
Adam Riley: Wow, never mind Hello Kitty…with this style of game, it’s more like Die Kitty!
ALL: *laughs*
Adam Riley: If you’re open to any project, and Nintendo came to you and said you can use any of its IP, which IP would you choose?
Hideyuki Shin & Uncle Death: *laughs*
Adam Riley: Hmm, Animal Crossing?
Uncle Death: Actually, Hello Kitty…hmm, yeah, Animal Crossing is a great suggestion!
Adam Riley: Suddenly, I’m thinking that the world of Let It Die mixed with an Animal Crossing setting could be a smash hit!
Uncle Death: Animal Cross: The Dark Side.
*Uncle Death gestures*
Adam Riley: Ah, you mean like a top and bottom – light Animal Crossing side at the top, darker Let It Die below? Amazing! Many people could start building up their island in the peaceful section, and then someone could come from the darker side and destroy it all?!
Uncle Death: Yes, break and smash it apart! That sounds fun!
ALL: *more laughter*
Adam Riley: In Inferno, is the player character predefined or customisable?
Hideyuki Shin: Players choose from a set of character templates rather than creating from scratch.
Adam Riley: I ask because many characters in new games have no background of intriguing features because the focus is more on just building something unique to the player and diving in, but I’m a purist so love pre-set characters with deep storylines to work through.
Uncle Death: The characters you choose from, you’re a soul that inhabits the bodies of them. You’re then kind of body-jumping.
Adam Riley: Do the souls have different characteristics?
Hideyuki Shin: Well, YOU are the soul, so there’s only one of you…
Uncle Death: They don’t have backstories at present, but it sounds like a great idea for each one you inhabit to have that sort of background… and we think we could do it, definitely! It’s a good idea!
Adam Riley: Maybe in an expansion pack further down the line…
Uncle Death: Yes, yes, that sounds perfect. Keep giving us more ideas like this!!
Adam Riley: Thank you very much.
Hideyuki Shin & Uncle Death: Thank you very much.
