What happened to Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link?
Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link was announced at the series’ 20th anniversary event on April 10, 2022, in the same breath as Kingdom Hearts IV: a GPS-based action RPG for phones, in development since 2019, that would lay real-world maps under Kingdom Hearts combat, in parties of up to three, with an original story set around Scala ad Caelum. It was positioned as the bridge title that would carry the series to Kingdom Hearts IV, the connective tissue its name advertised.
The testing was real and extensive. A closed beta ran on iOS in Japan from January 13 to 18, 2023, confirming the location-based design (the game reads the player’s position continuously to place them on its map), and a further closed beta followed for the United Kingdom and Australia later in 2023. Launch, first expected in 2024, slipped; in November 2024 Square Enix delayed the game again.
On May 14, 2025, Square Enix cancelled it outright. The statement deserves quoting in substance: the team had “worked hard on developing and adjusting the game,” but “determined that it would be difficult for us to offer a service that players would find satisfactory over a long period of time.” The cancellation sat inside the company’s wider turn from quantity to quality, and the same statement pivoted to reassurance: “The Kingdom Hearts series will continue. We are hard at work on Kingdom Hearts IV.” Within days, Square Enix published new Kingdom Hearts IV screenshots, the first in three years. Missing-Link’s beta testers remain the only people who have ever played it, and its story, whatever it held, is the saga’s one permanently missing link.
