FIVE ARMS

Build a five-member team in a tactical RPG where characters, equipment, and skills shape your strategy. Adventure, grow your team, and challenge other players.

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Five heroes. One plan.

FIVE ARMS is a turn-based PvP RPG about making five characters work as a team. Build around complementary roles, choose a formation, and decide who attacks, supports or defends each turn. Cooperative techniques bring compatible characters together in dramatic joint attacks.

The game offers 420 characters across 83 clans and 30 formations to discover. Adventures provide CPU battles for practice and progression; ranked PvP puts your team and decisions against other players.

Available now on the App Store for iPhone. The current interface is Japanese; the English quick-start guide below explains the essential controls.

Inspiration

FIVE ARMS grew from the idea of bringing the strategic thinking of shogi and chess into a party-based fantasy RPG. Player-versus-player battles are the heart of the game: I wanted players to read their opponents, build their own strategies, and compete through their choices of characters, formations, equipment, skills, and spells.

What it does

FIVE ARMS is a competitive mobile RPG centered on five-member team battles against other players. Adventures provide a place to develop your team and explore its tactics before taking on human opponents.

The current roster includes over 400 characters across a wide variety of clans, combat roles, and abilities. Finding combinations that work together is a central part of building your team.

Players can:

  • Assemble a team with different offensive and support roles.
  • Customize characters with equipment, skills, and spells.
  • Challenge other players in ranked battles.
  • Discover additional formations through PvP, and use their distinctive layouts and effects to support a battle plan.
  • Bring compatible characters together to perform cooperative techniques.
  • Progress through adventures and develop the team.
  • Start playing with an automatically created guest account.

The current game interface is in Japanese. An internet connection is required.

English quick start

FIVE ARMS currently has a Japanese interface. Use this short guide alongside the two English guide images in the gallery.

  1. Install and open the game: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6815117412. Play in landscape with an internet connection. You can begin with a guest account; a subscription is not required for ordinary play.
  2. Start with a CPU adventure: On the home screen, tap 冒険 (Adventure). Choose an available village and an unlocked adventure. On its detail screen, use 対戦 (Battle) if needed to reveal the battle controls, then tap この冒険に出発 (Start this adventure) or 第1戦に出発 (Start battle 1).
  3. Give commands: Your team is on the right. Tap a hero, choose 攻撃 (Attack), 防御 (Defend) or an available technique, and tap the target when prompted. Repeat for the other heroes. 体力 is HP, 命 is Life, 技力 is technique points and 術力 is spell points.
  4. Commit the turn: Tap 全員の命令を確定 (Confirm all orders). If a review dialog appears, この命令で確定 confirms the orders. Keep an eye on 入力時間, the remaining command-entry time.
  5. Explore team strategy: Return to 編成 (Team). 陣形 opens formations and 装備管理 opens equipment management. When ready for a human opponent, return to ホーム (Home) and tap 対戦相手を探す (Find opponent).

Optional membership: Open 設定 (Settings) → 月額会員 (Monthly Membership). The Premium plan is the right-hand 超応援プラン. Judge trial eligibility, enrollment dates and renewal details are provided in the private Additional info section. The trial is configured for the US storefront; confirm that Apple's purchase sheet shows the free month before approving a subscription.

What to look for: Try changing the formation and the mix of attack and support commands, then compare how the next battle unfolds. Compatible characters can combine their abilities into cooperative techniques. The main video shows actual iPhone gameplay; the supplementary 20-technique video uses the desktop battle-preview tool.

Gameplay and art direction

The game combines colorful fantasy characters with a landscape interface designed to show both teams and battle commands together.

The strategy has a chess-like quality: positioning, the roles of individual characters, and thinking ahead all matter. Players choose commands for their team and adapt as the battle develops.

Formations are more than visual arrangements. Each offers a tactical role and effects that influence how a team fights. Cooperative techniques add another layer by allowing compatible characters to combine their strengths in a powerful action.

The demo shows actual iPhone gameplay against a CPU opponent, including team preparation, combat, a cooperative technique, and the membership screen. PvP remains the core competitive experience.

Bonus: 20 Special Techniques & Cooperative Attacks

Watch the additional showcase with English captions: https://youtu.be/ZY4qyBt7wR4

This supplementary video was recorded using the desktop battle-preview tool to highlight combat animations and visual effects. The main video above shows actual iPhone gameplay.

How I built it

The game uses JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, with a Node.js backend hosted on Render. Supabase handles authentication and persistent player data.

A native Swift iOS app connects the game to Sign in with Apple, Apple App Attest, and in-app purchases.

I integrated the RevenueCat iOS SDK to handle subscription product loading and purchases. The backend verifies transactions and grants membership benefits, while purchase restoration lets players recover their subscription status.

Monetization

The game is free to play, with two optional monthly auto-renewing subscriptions:

  • Support Plan: JPY 480 per month. Removes the daily PvP match limit, provides a total of three Life Drops per login day, and grants two gacha tickets per purchase or renewal.
  • Super Support Plan: JPY 980 per month. Removes the daily PvP match limit, provides a total of eight Life Drops per login day, and grants six gacha tickets per purchase or renewal.

Free players can play up to ten PvP matches per day and receive two Life Drops per login day. Gacha tickets are used to obtain randomly selected characters.

Apple account linking is required before purchasing a subscription. The membership screen includes purchase restoration, subscription management, terms of use, and a privacy policy.

Challenges and what I learned

One challenge was coordinating subscription purchases, restoration, and server-side rewards without granting the same rewards twice.

During device testing, overlapping purchase-information requests could prevent the membership screen from loading correctly. Serializing those requests resolved that issue.

This work taught me the importance of testing the complete purchase flow—from the native purchase screen to backend verification and the final in-game reward.

Current status

FIVE ARMS launched on the App Store on September 29, 2026. Version 1.0 (build 3) and both subscriptions have been approved by Apple. The app is available in Japan and the United States.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6815117412

What's next

I plan to expand the roster substantially beyond its current 400-plus characters, adding many more distinctive characters and new possibilities for team composition over time.

Other planned improvements include a Japanese/English language switch, a clearer route to the membership screen from Settings and the Shop, and preventing accidental text selection during touch controls. These are future plans, not features already shown in this release.

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