Yoshiya Kiryu - Development

Development

The World Ends with You was developed by the same team that created the Kingdom Hearts series, with input from Jupiter, the company that developed Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. The development of the game started two and a half years before its Japanese release, during the development of Kingdom Hearts II and the end of development of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. At that time, Nintendo had announced the DS, but it was not yet on the market; Square Enix asked the team to make a game specifically for the handheld system. The creative team—consisting of Tatsuya Kando (director), Tomohiro Hasegawa (co-director), Takeshi Arakawa (planning director), and Tetsuya Nomura (character design)—were able to experience the DS during the "Touch DS" event in November 2004. From this demonstration, they had envisioned a version of Chain of Memories in which the card game aspects would be present on the bottom screen and an action role-playing game on the top. As they continued to work on the game, the developers realized that they wanted to use the touchscreen more, to make "a game that can only be played on the DS". However, they also encountered the problem that by focusing heavily on the touchscreen, the top screen would be ignored. From this, the idea of the dual screen battle system arose. Several other options were explored for the top-screen game, including command-based battles or a music game, but once they reviewed the game from the eyes of the player, they ultimately settled on the card-game approach with the player having the option to control the game if they wanted to. Even with the completion of the Japanese version of the game, the team felt the dual screen system was too much for overseas audiences, and attempted to change the card-game mechanic into a special meter that would fill up with normal attacks from Neku, but this was not completed in time for release. However, the team was able to alter the "information overload" of the numerous tutorials at the start of the game in the North American release, reducing the amount of text presented as well as allowing the tutorials to be skipped. The "Active Encounter" system, the ability for the player to select when and how to go into battle, was developed specifically to avoid the issues of "grinding" that are common with most standard RPG systems. While they included the mechanics of being able to scan non-playable characters to see their thoughts, the team was not able to integrate this mechanic more into the game.

In addition to creating unique gameplay, the designers wanted to build the game around a real location. Initially, they had planned to use a large number of locations across the entire world as the setting. They narrowed down the settings to specific cities due to practicality issues. Ultimately, Kando selected Shibuya as the main setting within the first year of development, despite concerns that overseas players would find the setting unfamiliar. The team wanted to make sure the city was represented accurately within the game, and went on "location hunts" onto building rooftops without permission to get photographs. The layout of Shibuya was duplicated for the game, retaining the real-world landmarks while rebranding the names of stores and buildings for copyright reasons; for example, the 109 Building was renamed to be the "104 Building", while one of the busiest Starbucks, adjacent to the scramble crossing, was renamed "Outback Cafe". The success of the game has led to fans going on tours of the district to match physical locations in Shibuya with those in the game. The selection of Shibuya led to the incorporation of much of the game's other features, including food, clothing, and cell phone usage. The team initially thought of the idea of using graffiti around Shibuya as the source of the player's power in the game but had difficulty representing it; this led to the creation of the psych pins used in the game.

The team decided to stay with two-dimensional graphics instead of three-dimensional graphics, believing it would help differentiate themselves from other Square Enix titles as well as better represent their vision for the game. When first approached with the task of creating the art for the game, background art director Takayuki Ohdachi thought the modern-day setting would be too boring, and opted to use highly skewed and angular images of Shibuya to avoid this; the rest of the creative team found this approach to fit the game quite well. For combat, the background of the top screen was selected for visual interest, while the bottom touchscreen background was designed to emphasize the gameplay. Ohdachi was also responsible for the artwork for the psych pins, and used a mix of pop art and tribal designs for the various graphics. Character designs were handled by Tetsuya Nomura and Gen Kobayashi. Character designs were made to match with the real-world Tokyo setting, after which their outfits were designed based on the character's personality. Kobayashi was also in charge of designing the game's non-player characters and noted how most designs made it to the final product. Hasegawa was responsible for creating the designs for the Noise creatures, and wanted to have them recognizable as creatures before they decay into skeletons. In keeping with the theme of human emotion in the game, Hasegawa selected creatures that conveyed such feelings, such as wolves and crows. Representation of the Noise in the game required drawing the 2D sprites from several angles to match the action on screen as well as using rotoscoping on pre-rendered sprites, and took several iterations between Square Enix and Jupiter to make sure that the sprites' art matched the style of game, with Kando making the two-hour trip between Tokyo and Kyoto weekly to check on the progress.

The developers knew that for the story, they wanted to "throw the player right in the action, with things he had to do without explanation", in addition to creating a sense of urgency and mystery for the player. They developed an initial draft of the game's plot and gave it to script writer Sachie Hirano and scenario event Planer Yukari Ishida to expand on. The returned version was very close to the initial vision for the game's story. However, there were still difficulties in filling out the story, only achieving some smooth development about halfway through the process, and even then, there were still changes made just prior to creating the master image for the game. Several inconsistencies with the game's story were found in the final quality checks that had to be resolved. The Square Enix localization team, while translating most of the dialog and interface items into English and other European languages, preserved many Japanese elements to avoid losing the culture of the game. The team was also limited by the size of the dialog balloons used within game, and took several steps to avoid losing the meaning of the story within the game.

The Japanese title, translated as It's a Wonderful World, was not used internationally due to copyright issues. Instead, the game was released in North America and Europe under the name The World Ends with You. The game was officially announced on September 13, 2006 by Square Enix, and premiered at the 2006 Tokyo Game Show two weeks later. On December 5, 2007, Square Enix announced that the game would be released for Europe and Australia in April 2008, while a similar announcement was made for a North American release on December 17, 2007.

A special "Wonderful World" edition of the "Gloss Silver" Nintendo DS Lite was created and sold as a bundle with the game as part of its Japanese release. The game's early plot was adapted into a two-chapter one-shot manga by Shiro Amano, published over two issues of Monthly Shōnen Gangan. In North America, the manga has been released online via the Square Enix Members website. Both Nomura and Tatsuya Kando stated that they hoped they would be given the opportunity to create a sequel to the game. Neku, Shiki, Joshua, Beat, and Rhyme appear in the video game Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance as non-playable characters who are challenged to a task similar to the Reapers' Game. The cameos are the first non-Disney and non-Final Fantasy characters to appear in the Kingdom Hearts franchise.

A port of the game for iOS, titled The World Ends With You -Solo Remix-, was released on August 27, 2012. The iOS version features a remixed soundtrack from the original DS release. New assets at the conclusion of the iOS game hint at a possible sequel, but no confirmation has been made by Square Enix.