Keri-hime Sweets

» see kerihime.gungho.jp as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the last words ~

You aimed a princess at things and kicked her. That was the game: a slingshot arc through a sweets-themed fantasy world, with enemies that came apart when she landed on them. It reached Android on 19 November 2012 and iOS a week later, and GungHo kept it running until noon on 30 January 2026. Thirteen years and two months is a long time for anything on a phone, and it is a very long time for a casual action game whose whole pitch fits in one sentence.

It was also the sequel. Keri-hime Quest, subtitled KICKING MY HERO, had launched on 3 November 2011 and ran until 28 February 2017, which means the original and its successor were live alongside each other for over four years. After the original went, the sequel kept going for another eight years and eleven months.

Its reach ran inward. Instead of going global, Keri-hime Sweets traded characters with the games around it, and the partner list reads like a directory of Japanese mobile gaming between 2013 and 2020: Puzzle & Dragons, Attack on Titan, Madoka Magica, Lupin III, Yatterman, A Certain Magical Index, Summons Board, Divine Gate, Emil Chronicle Online, Ragnarok Odyssey Ace, and a convenience-store tie-in with Ministop. That is a real distribution strategy, and every road in it led to another Japanese release.

GungHo announced the end on 16 October 2025, at two in the afternoon. The paid items had already stopped selling at seven that morning. Automaton noted at the time that the official notice did not explain the circumstances, and nothing published since has.

~ the record ~

~ the cats kept her ~

In April 2013, a few months into its run, Keri-hime Sweets ran its first crossover with a title from another company. The partner was The Battle Cats, by PONOS. It worked both ways: clear the Keri-hime stage inside The Battle Cats and you got an item in Keri-hime Sweets, clear the Battle Cats stage inside Keri-hime Sweets and you unlocked Keri-hime as a unit in The Battle Cats. They did it again that November, and a third time in January 2015.

The last event of Keri-hime Sweets' life was the same pairing, and it did not happen in Keri-hime Sweets. From 11:00 on 9 January 2026 until 10:59 on 26 January, The Battle Cats ran a Keri-hime Sweets gacha and brought back every previous crossover stage. Four days later the game those characters came from was off.

The units stayed. KHM48 and Crazed Keri-hime got a third evolution form in that update, and PONOS wrote in the patch notes that the evolution would remain available after the collaboration period ended. So the princess is still kickable, in a cat game, by players who may never have opened the app she was built for.

~ how GungHo closes a thing ~

The wind-down had a shape, and it was the same shape the first game got. Keri-hime Quest's end was announced on 14 October 2016, paid sales stopped that day, the app came off the stores on 30 January 2017, and support ran on until 28 February. Keri-hime Sweets was announced on 16 October 2025, paid sales stopped that day, the slot machines closed at noon on 15 December, the app came off on 30 January 2026, and the support site was set to stay up until 29 May. Nine years apart, same choreography, down to the calendar date the app was pulled.

Today kerihime.gungho.jp answers with a redirect to the corporate homepage, where there is no mention of the game at all. Unused paid premium tickets were refunded through a form that opened after the servers stopped.

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