Kingdom Hearts's creative director Tetsuya Nomura reveals more morsels of information on the upcoming 3DS iteration...

Square Enix's Tetsuya Nomura has been doing the rounds to talk about Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance on Nintendo 3DS, and his interview with Famitsu has revealed some nice plot details.

The general struggle takes place in worlds that are "enclosed by sleep". Although it seemed everything went back to being peachy in previous games, this is not actually the case.

"Basically there are worlds that fell into darkness besides the ones Sora returned to normal in the first Kingdom Hearts -- some of the princesses' worlds, Dumbo's world, and so on. The original story had all these worlds get fixed up in KH1's ending, but not all of them completely returned to normal, instead lying in stasis between light and dark. Since the worlds themselves are asleep, the game is set in the dreams these worlds are having. It's Sora and Riku's job to wake these worlds up, return them to normal, and gain their Keyblade Master certification."

These worlds are populated by Dream Eaters, who act as both enemy monsters and player companions. Protagonist Sora has to use these creatures to his advantage in order to travel to other sleeping worlds. It seems that the player can level-up Dream Eaters in battle, which in turn improves their own abilities. There are apparently "tens" of different types of Dream Eaters to track down in the game.

Nomura also spoke about the inclusion of characters from The World Ends With You. Neku shows up in Traverse Town, and has been separated from his original partner Shiki. It was hinted that more characters from the hit DS game would show up too.

Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance is around 60 to 70 percent complete and is due out in Japan in spring.