and sales strategy to "[provide] well-known properties on several platforms, allowing exposure of the products to as wide an audience as possible". The first of these was the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, and Square Enix intended to have campaigns for other series whereby multiple games in different genres would be developed simultaneously. Although no such project for the Mana series had been announced by this point, it was announced in late 2004 that an unnamed Mana game was in development for the upcoming Nintendo DS platform. In early 2005, Square Enix announced a "World of Mana" project, the application of this "polymorphic content" idea to the Mana franchise, which would include several games across different genres and platforms. These games, as with the rest of the series, would not be direct sequels or prequels to one another, even if appearing so at first glance, but would instead share thematic connections. The first release in this project and the sixth release in the Mana series was announced in September 2005 as Children of Mana for the DS. Children of Mana was developed by Nex Entertainment, who had previously created dungeon crawl games in the Shining series, in collaboration with Square Enix. It was designed by series creator Koichi Ishii, directed by Yoshiki Ito, and produced by Takashi Orikata and Katsuji Aoyama. The game features an opening cinematic by Production I.G. The game was planned from the start as a "fun-for-all action type game" taking advantage of the DS's capabilities. Ishii was especially focused on creating a truly cooperative multiplayer game, which he had wanted to create since Secret of Mana (1993), the second game in the series. Despite this, he chose not to utilize the DS's Nintendo Wi-Fi functionality in order to effect an experience in which players would interact with people in the near vicinity rather than remotely, in congruence with the local multiplayer found in Secret of Mana. He also designed the multiplayer to create a sense of chaotic excitement, such that players could interact without focusing on the difficulty or competing against each other. Several of the game's design choices were meant to focus more on the action components, such as attacks sending enemies flying across the screen and the use of both the buttons and stylus to keep the controls simple and directly connected to the action. The randomly generated dungeon crawling mechanic was also a