You already heard if you're Kingdom Hearts savvy enough to click on this article: Kingdom Hearts Dark Road is now available. For the occasion, Kingdom Hearts Series Director Tetsuya Nomura published a special message on Twitter, which we partly translated below.

Tetsuya Nomura: "The Dark Seeker arc, which featured the battle against Xehanort, ended with Kingdom Hearts III right? So it'll be a bit weird to say this game is part of this saga. Especially because it's not about the battle against Xehanort but Xehanort's own fight.

I know some might say that's a bit too complicated... and yeah it probably is, a little. The truth is, I had this story concept in mind for years, but it just wouldn't fit with the concepts the rest of the development team wanted, and I was about to give up on it. But then the Union Cross team said they wanted to make a game with a new protagonist, and Xehanort unexpectedly had a lot fans, so thanks to them and the developers we finally made this game.

Plus, the browser game Kingdom Hearts Union Cross, which is part of the Cross Series and has going on for 7 years now, depicts past events without Sora. So we decided to make this game part of the Cross Series too."

So there you have it, Dark Road could have happened earlier but it just wasn't possible until now. Note that an official translation of the message will probably be published in the next few hours or days on the Dark Road english Twitter.

Kingdom Hearts Dark Road is out on App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore.

You can read all the details on Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory here and check its trailer here. More Kingdom Hearts is coming too.

Update: The Kingdom Hearts Dark Road english twitter published an official translation of the message

Nomura most notably mentioned changes will be made to Union Cross soon so it's more accessible to returning players and newbies starting thanks to Dark Road. He also spoke about the reduced number of Flash animators on Union Cross and jokingly said they're recruiting. Lastly, there are still secrets regarding the original title of Dark Road, "DP".