Kingdom Hearts
Companion Guide
Terms, characters, and the questions each entry leaves open, to read after finishing each entry of the main document.
Preface
This guide exists to help you remember. Kingdom Hearts builds up a great many names, places, rules and relationships, and after a long entry it is easy to lose hold of some of them. Each section here goes with one entry of the main document and gathers what that entry established: the terms and lore it introduced, where each character stands when it ends, the questions it leaves open, and a few facts about the game it comes from.
Each section is safe to read as soon as you have finished the matching entry. Nothing in a section draws on anything later than the entry it belongs to. The final section, The Missing Links, covers cancelled and lost games and assumes you have finished the whole book.
Entries of the main document are named in bold italics, as in Birth by Sleep, to set them apart from the games they adapt, which are named in plain text.
Everything defined here is also defined inside the story at the point it first matters. This guide exists so the definitions can be found again without hunting for them, not because the story is incomplete without it.
Contents
The Book of Prophecies
Terms and lore
Daybreak Town. The town where the Master taught and the Unions worked, built in blue and white stone on the water, with a fountain square at its centre and a purple star worked into the paving. Its clock tower stands across a bridge and is closed to ordinary wielders. The six apprentices met in a room inside it.
The Book of Prophecies. Written by the Master of Masters himself, not found and not given to him. He wrote down what he saw through an eye that gazes into the future. It is not a complete account of what is coming. By his own description it holds only what the Keyblade he gave to Luxu sees, and only the parts he judged worth writing down. Five copies went to five apprentices. Its final passage is the one that frightens everybody who reads it: "On that fated land, a great war shall transpire. Darkness will prevail and the light expire." His own plainer gloss on the same passage: the entire world will be lost to darkness.
The Gazing Eye and the No Name. The eye is the Master's own, set inside a Keyblade made for the purpose. What the eye sees travels back to him, which is how the book gets written. The Keyblade travels forward, carried by Luxu and then handed from apprentice to apprentice after him. The blade has no name of its own. Luxu assumed "Gazing Eye" was its name, was corrected, and called it No Name as a joke. Nobody corrected the joke either.
The Foretellers and the Unions. The five apprentices given copies of the book, each leading a Union of Keyblade wielders: Ira over Unicornis, Aced over Ursus, Invi over Anguis, Gula over Leopardos, Ava over Vulpes. Each Union's animal is on its Foreteller's mask. The Unions are kept apart and kept competing, and alliances between them are forbidden, on the reasoning that imbalance makes people hungry for power, and that hunger is how darkness gets in.
The assigned roles. Ira to lead and to succeed the Master. Aced to stand at Ira's right hand, and to step forward himself if Ira ever proved unfit, which is the clause that tears everything apart. Invi to watch the others impartially and mediate, told to be fair and not to be afraid to speak up. Gula to find the traitor among the six and stop them, and to trust nobody, with a test to go by: whoever departs from their assigned role is the traitor. Ava to forget the notion of Unions, find wielders with potential, and build a separate organisation. Luxu to carry the Keyblade and the box forward, and to watch without interfering. His own summary of it: "Watching. That's my role."
The black box. Heavy and black, with thirteen locks, given to Luxu to carry forward along with the No Name. He is never, ever to open it. When he asked what was inside, the Master told him, and it went no further than the two of them.
"May your heart be your guiding key." The Master's constant parting words, said so often they became a way of ending a conversation. Luxu says them in his own form, "May my heart be my guiding key," as he leaves the town. Aced says the same before he turns his Keyblade on the other Foretellers.
Lux and Darklings. Lux is the light that comes off Heartless when a wielder defeats them. It is gathered and counted, and each Union's total is ranked against the others'. Darkness can take a wielder's lux. When it does, the wielder does not die. They become a Darkling, something that comes back wanting more.
Chirithy. Small round creatures the Master made, one to a wielder, to walk beside them and tell them what to do next. They reach their wielders through dreams when they cannot show them the way directly. If a wielder's heart is tainted by darkness, their Chirithy turns dark and becomes a Nightmare. The Master delivered this rule as an afterthought, prefaced with "Oh, right, before I forget."
The bangles. Bangles that draw darkness into whoever wears them, quietly and over time. They came through the Moogle's shop behind the fountain, traded in by something that looked like a Chirithy and was not one.
The Lost Page. A page missing from the Book of Prophecies, held by Gula because the Master gave it to him along with the task of catching the traitor. Its text: "Imbalance observed, strength misplaced, a future filled with sorrow. Words of truth misunderstood as they explore the secret of tomorrow. With a single strike, toll the bells and herald the end, bringing war upon us, as fate did intend." It names the traitor only as the one who bears the sigil. Gula's reading of it: the traitor is the catalyst for the events that lead to the world's end.
Kingdom Hearts. Summoning it is forbidden. Gula meant to do it anyway, certain it would bring the Master back to explain the page.
The Dandelions. Wielders gathered by Ava from all five Unions, chosen for ability and for a resistance to darkness that she tested by putting darkness near them. They were trained apart and told to hide rather than fight when the end came, so that they would remain after everyone else was gone. She named them for the seeds on the hill above the town: "Let the wind carry you far, far away. My Dandelions." She did not count herself among the survivors.
The Keyblade War. The war the book foretold. It began when Ava's and Luxu's Keyblades met and the bells of the clock tower rang across the whole town, and it was fought in the badlands outside it, where the ways met, between wielders of all five Unions. Afterwards the ground there was a graveyard, full of the Keyblades of those who fell.
The backup of Daybreak Town. After the war, almost everyone woke in a copy of Daybreak Town made as data, "a backup of the real one," with their memories of the war removed on Ava's instruction, a job Ephemer carried out. The worlds had come apart in the war and were recreated as data so that they could still be reached.
The Union leaders. Five wielders Ava chose to lead the Unions once the Foretellers were gone, each given a rulebook and allowed to keep their memories of the war: Ephemer, Skuld, Brain, Lauriam and Ventus. They kept the Unions in name only and ran them as one.
Darkness. Ancient and formless, older than the town and older than the book. It cast off its own form long ago, and while it has none it cannot be destroyed. To be killed it must first be inside something with a heart strong enough to hold it. It spreads by going at hearts, and what comes out of people's worst feelings is Heartless. There is more than one. It stated its own plan in one word: "Infection."
The lifeboats. Person-sized pods with a door hinged at the top and a heart-shaped window, kept in the basement of the clock tower. Seven of them. They were built for crossing between worlds rather than through time, and can do either but not both at once. Travelling through time costs the traveller their body. At the far end there must be something to build a new one from, and somebody there who remembers them. The Master's line on what their departure means: "When all seven of the lifeboat's pods depart, this world will end, and a new day will dawn."
Sleep. The choice offered to a wielder's heart after death. It is what became of most of the Dandelions, whose hearts sleep on, each guarded by what was once their Chirithy, now in another shape. The other choice is to go on instead, into whatever hearts go on into.
Scala ad Caelum. The city built on the ruins of Daybreak Town, on the same ground, which is why the purple star is still in its paving. A statue above its fountain shows a boy holding a Keyblade. Sigurd names him to Brain as the town's founder and the first Keyblade Master: Ephemer.
Characters and where they stand
The Master of Masters. Cheerful, offhand, and impossible to read. He hands out the end of the world in the voice of a man reading a delivery schedule, and he is plainly fond of his apprentices. He disappeared without warning before the war, and neither Ava nor Gula found any sign of where he went.
Ira. Earnest and dutiful, the one who asks only what he should do. Certain a traitor sat among the six, he built a theory around a missing page. He fought in the war, and in it put himself between Aced and the wielder.
Aced. The strongest and proudest of the six, and the least willing to wait. He carried the second half of his role until the day he decided to use it. In the war he declared the Unions one and himself their leader.
Invi. Fair and careful, and certain Aced's heart still belonged to the light. The part of her instructions about speaking up, she kept and never spent. She fought in the war, and in the middle of it wished someone a good long life.
Gula. Obedient to the letter, which made him look exactly like a traitor. He trusted nobody and carried the Lost Page in secret. Wounded, he set out to summon Kingdom Hearts and bring the Master back. In the war he said that perhaps they would meet again somewhere.
Ava. Warm and hopeful, the only one of the six holding an instruction the others had not heard. She built the Dandelions in secret and sent them away before the end. She went looking for Luxu, asked him who the traitor was, and attacked him when he told her. After the war, Ventus called for her in an empty house, and she did not come.
Luxu. Wry and patient, the apprentice who watches. He kept his promise to carry the box and never open it. As the copy of the town failed, he sent a figure in a white cloak forward in a pod as "the true Dandelion," then took Brain's body for his own. He walks the graveyard of Keyblades with the box and the No Name.
The wielder. Quiet, steady, and loyal to Ephemer. When four Darknesses tried to take them, the wielder only pretended to be possessed, then sealed the four away along with themselves. Mortally wounded, they refused sleep. Their heart and their Chirithy's became one heart, and it went away from all of it.
Chirithy. The wielder's own, fussy and earnest, and firm that it is not a cat. It kept the wielder from remembering the war when Ephemer and Skuld asked it to. At the end it went with the wielder, and the two hearts became one.
Ephemer. Curious and restless, the one who asked why the Unions competed, and made a friend outside his own Union anyway. He stayed behind in the failing town with Skuld: "It's enough to keep me from giving up hope." Scala ad Caelum remembers him as its founder and the first Keyblade Master.
Skuld. Direct and decisive, quick to take a side and slow to let it go. She gave her place in a pod to Lauriam and stayed behind with Ephemer.
Strelitzia. Gentle and underestimated, with better magic than her brother. Chosen as a Union leader, she was struck down from behind in an empty house before she could deliver the message she carried. She later appeared to Lauriam in a white coat, and Elrena's Chirithy saw her walking with a figure in a black coat. Brain believes someone got at what remained of her in the data.
Lauriam. Proud, and slow to see his sister as his equal, until she was gone. Since then, relentless. He left by pod, still looking for her.
Elrena. Forthright and sharp. She lost her memories of before the war like almost everyone else, and helped Lauriam search anyway. She left by pod.
Brain. Clever and dry, and the one who worked out on his own that the town was data. Ava gave him a copy of the book and a note from the Master, to be opened when he needed it. He chose to stay behind for the sleepers, and Luxu took his body. Brain himself woke in Scala ad Caelum, the only one of those who left to come out in that time, and a man named Sigurd was waiting for him.
Ventus. Kind and earnest, and uneasy at the thought of wielders fighting each other. He took Strelitzia's place among the five with a Darkness inside him. He claimed her death as his own, then forced the Darkness into a shape that could be fought, and nearly died of it. He left by pod, unconscious.
The sorceress. She came into the town from outside, meaning to change what was written, and was told it could not be done from inside the copy. She beat Lauriam in the clock tower's basement and left in the seventh pod.
Sigurd. A man in Scala ad Caelum who was expecting Brain, and met him.
Questions
What is in the black box, and what did the Master tell Luxu about it?
Who was the traitor Luxu named to Ava?
Where did the Master of Masters go, and will he come back?
What does the Master's note to Brain say?
Who struck Strelitzia down: Ventus, or the Darkness inside him?
Who was the figure in the black coat seen walking with Strelitzia?
Who is the figure in the white cloak that Luxu sent forward as the true Dandelion?
Where did the pods carry Lauriam, Elrena and Ventus?
Will the sleeping Dandelions ever wake?
What does the sorceress want to change in the Book of Prophecies?
Where did the wielder's heart go?
What does Luxu mean to do in Brain's body?
Fun facts
Six deadly sins. Every apprentice is named for one of the seven deadly sins in Latin: Ira for ira, wrath; Aced for acedia, sloth; Invi for invidia, envy; Gula for gula, gluttony; Ava for avaritia, greed; and Luxu for luxuria, lust. The Foretellers' mask animals match the animals the medieval Ancrene Wisse uses for the same sins, except Gula's. The Ancrene Wisse gives gluttony a pig, and Gula wears a leopard.
Definitely not a cat. Chirithy insists it is not a cat, but the developers designed it around a Scottish Fold.
One story, told three ways. This entry draws on a game that began in 2013 as Kingdom Hearts χ, a free browser game, and was remade for phones in 2015 as Kingdom Hearts Unchained χ, then renamed Kingdom Hearts Union χ in 2017. A feature-length animated film, Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover, was released as a companion to it.
Gone from the stores. The game's online service ended in June 2021, leaving an offline version that could still replay the story. As of August 2024 it has been removed from every app store.
Dark Road
Terms and lore
The child of destiny. What the man who raised Xehanort told him he was, a hundred times over. When the boy asked what it meant, the answer was about saving the world and connecting with a great many others. He could find nothing in it he could use.
The islands. Where Xehanort grew up, brought there as an infant because darkness could not easily get at them. He was to stay until he was old enough to go to other worlds. There were no other children, and he outgrew the place: "This world is just too small."
Corridors of darkness. Ways between places, made of dark. A hooded figure opened one in the sand to send Xehanort from the islands to the city. Hermod and Urd were drawn into one against their will.
The city on the water. Mountains made entirely of white and gold buildings, a citadel on top of each, going on as far as the water goes, with a windmill on nearly every roof so the whole city is always turning slightly. A star is worked into its paving. Master Odin teaches his students here.
Lower and upper classmen. Odin's students. Xehanort joined six others as a lower classman. The upper classmen went out for their own examinations, and seven of them did not come back.
The Stairway to the Sky. The long stair in the city where the lower classmen sat together above the water whenever they were not training. Most of their friendships were made at the top of it.
Alba and Ater. A board game of white and black, sixteen silver and white pieces against sixteen gold and black, each piece named after somebody. Xehanort and Eraqus played it constantly, and Xehanort won.
The mirror. A mirror framed by tiles carrying the twelve signs, with a white theatre mask for a face. It answers any question truthfully, and cryptically. Asked about the missing upper classmen, it said each of them was acting alone.
Heartless. The first enemies the lower classmen fought, in a desert city, on the search for the missing upper classmen.
A vessel for darkness. Vidar's discovery about Baldr: the darkness had taken Baldr as a vessel and could not be reached any other way. The only way to destroy it was to destroy the body it stood in. Nothing was put into Baldr from outside. The darkness grew in him out of what he felt in everyone else, the darkness they all had and held down, until it was his own.
Kingdom Hearts. Baldr meant to kill thirteen lights to summon it. Years later, Xehanort came to believe that summoning it was "the only way."
The false light. Xehanort's name for the light the world holds up. He watched it hide Baldr's darkness until that darkness killed his friends, and he stopped believing in it. He did not stop believing in light itself.
Thirteen lifetimes. Xehanort's conclusion that the world needs rebuilding, not repairing, and that one lifetime is too short to do it. He would need thirteen. Then: "Scratch that. One more to explore the new world."
The Master's Defender and the No Name. The Keyblades given to Eraqus and Xehanort when they were made Keyblade Masters on the same day, seven years after Xehanort arrived. Eraqus, called the true heir, received the Master's Defender. Xehanort received the No Name, which Eraqus called a Keyblade from the era of the Lost Masters.
The graveyard. A long graveyard on the far side of the city. Four stones went up there for the classmates: Hermod, Urd, Vor, and Bragi.
Characters and where they stand
Xehanort. Curious, restless and very sure of himself, and early on troubled by the idea that darkness can hide inside someone without their knowing. He struck Baldr down himself and carried it for years. He became a Keyblade Master alongside Eraqus, turned against the false light, fought Eraqus over summoning Kingdom Hearts, and left. As an old man, he went back to the mirror to ask whether the friends from his dreams had ever truly existed.
Eraqus. Late to everything, funny on purpose, and the reason the class held together. He believed that darkness must be got rid of entirely, a conviction he put down to his family, since his grandfather had fought it too, and he wants to be a beacon for people lost in it. Made a Master and the true heir, he raised his Keyblade against Xehanort "as a true friend," and they parted.
The man in the cloak. He raised Xehanort on the islands from infancy, taught him about light and darkness, and never once lowered his hood. He died when Xehanort was in his early teens.
The hooded figure. Came to Xehanort on the islands soon after the man in the cloak died, would not say who he was, and opened the corridor that took him to the city.
Master Odin. The old Keyblade Master who took Xehanort in and taught the class. He meant to stand down, with Xehanort and Eraqus replacing him, and arranged their examination early.
Vor. The small one, who got separated from the group and found the mirror. Baldr struck her down. Xehanort and Eraqus reached her in time to say goodbye, and she faded while they were still talking to her.
Hermod. A classmate who went looking for Baldr and found him. Baldr killed him with darkness.
Urd. A classmate who went with Hermod into a corridor of darkness to find Baldr. Baldr killed her too.
Bragi. The quiet one, never lost by accident and never far from trouble, and so easy to overlook. He was counted among the dead and given a stone. A month later, a man walked through the empty graveyard and put his hood back, and the face was Bragi's. There had never been a Bragi, only a body with somebody inside it. Nobody ever found out.
Baldr. He could feel the darkness in everyone's heart, and the way they held on to the light against it, until the darkness he felt became his own. He killed his classmates and meant to kill thirteen lights to summon Kingdom Hearts. Xehanort struck him down.
Hoder. Baldr's sister, an upper classman. She faded into light reaching out toward her brother.
Vidar. An upper classman who came for Baldr and worked out what had happened to him. He gathered the others to do what had to be done, and they were killed. He lived long enough to apologise and hand the task to Xehanort.
Questions
Why does Xehanort remember Ephemer, Skuld, Brain, Lauriam and Ventus, people he has never met?
Who was the man in the cloak who raised Xehanort, and why did he never lower his hood?
Who was the hooded figure who sent Xehanort off the islands?
Will Xehanort ever see his mother again?
What did Baldr say before Xehanort struck him down?
Who was living inside Bragi's body?
How does Xehanort mean to summon Kingdom Hearts, and what will he do with thirteen lifetimes?
Will Xehanort and Eraqus meet again, and will they still be friends?
Fun facts
A class of Norse gods. Xehanort's teacher and every one of his fellow students except Eraqus is named for a figure from Norse mythology. Odin is the chief of the gods. Hermod is their messenger, Vor a goddess of wisdom, Urd one of the Norns who watch over the past, and Bragi a name tied to poetry. Vidar is known for avenging his father. In the myths, Baldr is the god of light, and his death at his brother Höðr's hand begins the chain of events that ends the world. Here, Hoder is his sister.
Project Xehanort. The game was first announced in January 2020 under the working title "Project Xehanort," with a guess-the-name campaign whose clue was "8 letters, 2 words." The real title was revealed a week later.
An ending that almost went missing. The game's servers shut down in 2021 before its story was finished. Square Enix promised the ending would come in an offline version, which was delayed more than once and finally released in August 2022.
Birth by Sleep
Terms and lore
The Unversed. Vanitas's negative emotions given monstrous bodies. They came into existence at the moment he and Ventus were split apart. He can create them, command them, and take them back into himself, and every reabsorption makes his condition worse and produces more of them, which is a closed loop with no exit. When Vanitas was destroyed, every Unversed in every world ceased to exist along with him. Eraqus, working from Yen Sid's warning, described them to his students as fledgling emotions that had taken monster form. Vanitas gave Ventus the accurate version during a fight he was winning.
The χ-blade. Not a Keyblade. It is the original, and every Keyblade since is an imperfect copy of it. It exists alongside the true Kingdom Hearts, described as a perfect union of all hearts and all worlds, and it is the only key to that door. Xehanort's gloss on the character: an ancient letter, read by some as "kye," meaning death either way, a letter that spells endings.
In the ancient war it shattered into twenty pieces, seven of light and thirteen of darkness. Xehanort's method for reforging it was to build a heart of pure light and a heart of pure darkness and force them to collide, which is the entire reason Ventus and Vanitas were made. What Vanitas produced at the Keyblade Graveyard was defective, whole in the world but visibly cracked from inside Ven's heart, because Ventus never consented to the merger.
Keyblade Masters and the Mark of Mastery. A wielder stays an apprentice until a Master formally confers the title through an examination. Only a Master's word grants it. Aqua passed. Terra failed. Ventus was never examined. Mickey was mid-training under Yen Sid.
The Keyblade inheritance ceremony. A wielder passes on the aptitude by having the chosen person take the Keyblade in hand. If both the person and the weapon accept, that person gains the permanent ability to summon a Keyblade of their own later. Terra performed it deliberately on Riku, with the full incantation, despite never having been named a Master himself. Aqua performed it on Kairi by accident, when the frightened child grabbed the blade. Aqua chose not to perform it on Sora. The wooden Keyblade Terra gave Ventus was a joke version and carried nothing.
The three realms. The Realm of Light, the Realm of Darkness, and the realm between them, where the Land of Departure sits and where light and darkness are in balance. Worlds are islands separated by an ocean of darkness. Barriers were raised between them after the ancient war so that they could never fight it again. Only Keyblade wielders and creatures of darkness can cross, and the wielders' road is the Lanes Between, which is why Keyblade Armor exists at all. Time does not flow normally in the Realm of Darkness. Xehanort called it a place from which nobody returns.
The Dark Margin. A moonlit shore at the border of the Realm of Darkness.
The Land of Departure and Castle Oblivion. Eraqus's academy: a castle on a mountain above water, held by four golden chains. Eraqus taught Aqua that a Master may seal her world's Keyhole and remake the world as a labyrinth navigable only by someone who knows its true shape. Aqua did exactly that, sealing it with the Master's Defender. The throne room became the Chamber of Waking, with Ventus's body in the central seat.
Wayfinders. The star charms Aqua made, stained glass in silver frames marked with the emblem of Mastery, reinforced with magic because she could not get real thalassa shells.
Keyblade Armor and Keyblade Gliders. The armor protects a wielder from the darkness of the Lanes Between. The Keyblade converts into a glider for the journey.
Xehanort's Reports. Thirteen documents in his own hand, recoverable across all three journeys. They set the entire design out in advance: that he is aging and needs a younger vessel; that he intends a form of serial immortality by moving his heart from body to body; that on finding Ventus he decided to split the boy into one heart of pure light and one of pure darkness; that the split ruined him; that he handed the wreckage to Eraqus and, revisiting years later, identified Terra's appetite for power as the ground he wanted; and that the operational plan was to use Terra as emotional leverage against Ventus until the two halves collided.
Characters and where they stand
To be written.
Questions
To be written.
Fun facts
Who took Aurora's heart. The story leaves it where Maleficent left it: Terra wakes, the heart is gone, and he takes her word that he took it. Tetsuya Nomura was asked directly in the Birth by Sleep Ultimania and answered, "It was Master Xehanort and Maleficent." His reasoning was that "Terra, who has light residing in his heart, is not a being of darkness and therefore didn't steal Aurora's heart." (Translation by krexia, as cited on khwiki.)
The Missing Links
Games that were never released, or were released and can no longer be played. This section speaks about the series as a series of games. It spoils nothing in the main document, but it assumes the reader has finished it.
How this section is organised
Three sections, in descending order of how much they matter to the story the main document tells.
Missing-Link is the one that matters. It was canon, it was set inside the chronology this book follows, and it was cancelled before release. It would have sat between The Book of Prophecies and Dark Road.
The V CAST game was finished and released, but its own director placed it outside the series. It has a complete story, summarised here because it is otherwise very hard to see, and it is not canon.
Everything else is three items with no story in them at all: one cancelled game that never got past its pitch, and two discontinued services. They are listed so the survey is complete.
Everything here is drawn from the Kingdom Hearts Wiki (khwiki.com) and the sources it cites, the same single source the main document is built on.
I. Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link
Canon. Cancelled May 14, 2025. Would have been set between The Book of Prophecies and Dark Road.
Where it would have sat
Missing-Link was meant to take place after The Book of Prophecies and before Dark Road, in a stretch of Scala ad Caelum's history that khwiki calls a "blank era." In khwiki's own words, the game would have "explored the mysteries" of that era. Scala ad Caelum is the city Ephemer founds at the close of The Book of Prophecies, and the city Xehanort trains in during Dark Road.
It would also have reached forward. Tetsuya Nomura said in 2022 that "some figures that appear" in Missing-Link were tied to the story of Kingdom Hearts IV.
What is on record from it
Very little of the story survives in citable form. The worlds and characters khwiki confirms, from the closed beta build and from Square Enix's own announcement, are these:
Worlds. Scala ad Caelum and the Dive to the Heart.
Characters. Three named ones: the Player, Remus, and Freya. khwiki records their names and nothing more about any of them.
That is the whole of the confirmed story content.
How it was made and how it ended
Origins, January 2019. Development began as a research and development project for Kingdom Hearts III, and the first pitch was built on a modified copy of that game. The game itself was then rebuilt from scratch in Unreal Engine 5, according to its lead programmer, Mike Susetyo.
Announcement, April 10, 2022. Revealed at the Kingdom Hearts 20th Anniversary event. It was planned as a mobile game for iOS and Android, developed and published by Square Enix.
First closed beta, January 13 to 18, 2023. iOS only, Japan only.
Second closed beta, announced October 30, 2023. Opened to Japan, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The iOS test ran from November 29, 2023. The Android test was first set for January 2024 and then postponed so that the game could run comfortably on a wider range of devices. It was rescheduled to April 25 to May 2, 2024, then moved again in May 2024, with another iOS test held at around the same time.
Delay, November 18, 2024. The planned 2024 release was postponed. The announcement apologised to players and promised further information.
Cancellation, May 14, 2025. Development stopped. The team's stated reason was that it would be difficult to offer a service that could satisfy players over a long period of time.
The leak, June 2026. A two-minute opening cinematic from a beta build was leaked on social media. That build was not the one used in the public beta tests. The full opening was posted a few days later.
II. Kingdom Hearts (the V CAST game)
Not canon. Released February 1, 2005. Unplayable since December 15, 2012.
What it was
Its official title was simply Kingdom Hearts. It is usually called the V CAST game to tell it apart from the rest of the series. It was a mobile action RPG for Verizon Wireless's V CAST service and one of that service's launch titles. It was developed by Superscape and published by the Walt Disney Internet Group and Verizon Wireless, and Square Enix had no part in it. Verizon's storefront sold it as Kingdom Hearts 3D, and a few Verizon press releases called it Kingdom Hearts mobile or Disney's Kingdom Hearts 3D Mobile.
Why it is not canon
Tetsuya Nomura addressed it directly in the Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories Ultimania, asked about "a KH being developed for the mobile phone" in America. "There are quite a few things concerning that," he said. "Officially it has nothing to do with the original KH. It's completely different. The title is KH, Sora makes an appearance, but the story has nothing to do whatsoever with the KH, KHCOM, and KHII we're developing, because it is Disney who designed V-Cast." (Translation by Mors, as credited on khwiki. The ellipsis in the source is recast here as a full stop, with every word kept.)
How it was lost
Verizon shut V CAST down on December 15, 2012, and everything exclusive to it went with it. The game has never been re-released. It came in chapters, and a phone could hold only one chapter at a time, so the saved chapter had to be deleted before the next could be downloaded. Preservationists have since recovered and emulated the first, third, and fourth chapters. No files from the second chapter, Wonderland, have ever been found, and it is currently lost media. The soundtrack, by Ian Livingstone, was never released.
The story
Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy Cricket are on their way home from an adventure. Sora sets the Gummi Ship's controls to "economy wash" and goes to sleep, and his dreams begin to spiral out of control.
Swashbuckler's Island. Sora wakes alone on an island with no idea how he got there. A native parrot named Caw helps him gather materials for a raft. Maleficent summons Shadow Sora to meet him at an altar bearing the Heartless emblem. Sora defeats his shadow, but a tendril of darkness bites him and leaves him under a dark curse. He and Caw set out on the raft to find the Caterpillar in another world.
Wonderland, the lost chapter. Sora is separated from Caw but finds the Caterpillar, who tells him that to stop the darkness growing inside him he must make a potion from the teeth of three magical creatures. Sora defeats the Purple Crocodile and takes the first tooth. Donald and Goofy, meanwhile, go looking for him.
Agrabah. Sora wakes from another dream in Agrabah. An old man in the marketplace will guide him to the Cave of Wonders only after Sora buys him a cane for three gold coins. Inside the cave Sora takes the magic lamp and summons Genie, who grants him three wishes. The first goes immediately on escaping the lava-filled cavern. Sora then confronts Jafar, who has allied himself with the Heartless. He defeats Jafar's cobra form and takes a snake tooth, then uses his second wish to open a portal to Maleficent's Castle. Genie cannot grant the third wish, to defeat the Heartless, so Sora goes through the portal after a dragon tooth. Elsewhere, Maleficent captures Donald and Goofy.
Maleficent's Castle. Sora fights his way in and finds Caw locked in a cell, but it is a trap Maleficent has set to take his Keyblade. Further in he finds Donald and Goofy in prison cells, and finally the Kingdom Key inside a machine. Taking it back sets the machine running, and that was Maleficent's plan: only Sora's pure heart could open the portals that spread darkness to the worlds. She tells him that unless he cures his curse by midnight, the darkness will consume him entirely. Then she strips the Keyblade of its magic and withdraws to the castle's tower.
Sora cannot face her like that, so he goes back and frees Donald and Goofy. While they are working out a plan, Goofy accidentally uncovers a hidden entrance to Maleficent's potion room. Sora draws on Shadow Sora's power through a strange mirror and restores the Keyblade's magic. Donald and Goofy stay behind to find the antidote while Sora climbs to the top of the tower. He defeats Maleficent's dragon form, takes a dragon tooth, and goes back down to shut off her machine. With the worlds safe from darkness, he hurries back to his friends to make the potion. He jumps into the cauldron, and the world begins to spiral around him.
He wakes in the Gummi Ship with Donald and Goofy beside him. The whole adventure was a dream, though some signs of the journey remain.
III. The rest: no story to tell
Kingdom Hearts Online. Cancelled 2014, never announced. A free-to-play mobile action RPG for iOS and Android, begun around 2011 and built in Unity. It was made for Disney Interactive by the South Korean Studio EX, which Disney acquired in December 2012, with Trilabyrinth, Go For Launch Productions, Wideload Games, and Breakiron Animation & Design also contributing. Square Enix was not involved. Former developers also called it Kingdom Hearts Fragmented Keys and Kingdom Hearts Forgotten Keys. Disney Interactive's former co-president John Pleasants confirmed it existed in a Wall Street Journal interview in November 2013. Former developers say it was far along when it was cancelled, and one says it had been approved for release when work stopped. What survives is pitch material. Several Kingdom Hearts heroes would travel through a Game Central Station hub into Disney worlds, and the concept art draws on Aladdin, Alice in Wonderland, Frozen, Peter Pan, Snow White, Star Wars, Tangled, Tron: Uprising, and Wreck-It Ralph. khwiki notes that nobody knows whether any of those were actually planned or approved. There is also a simulated battle on the rooftops of Peter Pan's London, made for a presentation to Disney executives. No protagonist or plot is on record. It is one of only two games in khwiki's own list of cancelled Kingdom Hearts games. The other is Missing-Link.
Kingdom Hearts Mobile. Japan only, December 15, 2008, to April 30, 2013. A paid subscription portal for i-αppli phones rather than a game: customisable avatars in a hub called the Avatar Kingdom, messaging, ringtones, wallpapers, eight mini-games, and the download point for Kingdom Hearts coded, which was reached through it. It has no story of its own. Its avatar system came back as the Avatar Menu in Kingdom Hearts Re:coded.
Kingdom Hearts Magical Puzzle Clash. October 12, 2009, now offline. A Bejeweled-style browser game from Square Enix and Disney, made to promote 358/2 Days. You could play as Roxas, Xion, or Axel, and they play almost identically. In khwiki's words, "There is no story to the game," apart from a brief setup in which the three, as Organization members, must defeat Heartless and release captured hearts. It is explicitly not canon.