Yahya Danboos has released the first official teaser trailer for Luminous Nights. The upcoming Steam action RPG pairs PS2-era platforming and combat ideas with an original Arabian fantasy story.
Faris is pulled from a modern-day city into Noor City. An endless night has left the unfamiliar world exposed to the Masked King's Afreets. That is the setup for Luminous Nights, which now has its first official teaser trailer ahead of a planned Steam release in 2027.
A new world after dark
Independent developer Yahya Danboos is building Luminous Nights around a clear influence: Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 on PlayStation 2. The game is not a continuation of that series. It takes selected ideas from those titles and places them in an original world shaped by One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, Arabian folktales and folklore.
Faris is a 14-year-old boy transported from the modern world to Noor City. The city has bazaars, ancient ruins and towering palaces. Its residents are facing Afreets controlled by the Masked King.
Faris must find a way home while dealing with that conflict. He is joined by Sahar, a fairy companion who can transform into a sword.
That setup gives Luminous Nights a clearer identity than a simple Kingdom Hearts imitation. The game uses familiar action RPG ideas but puts them in an Arabian fantasy world, with a protagonist who begins in a contemporary city.
Combat meets rooftop exploration
Luminous Nights is designed to combine the platforming and exploration associated with Kingdom Hearts 1 with the faster combat linked to Kingdom Hearts 2. Players will move across Noor City's rooftops, markets, tunnels, ruins and palaces. Hidden routes and rewards will be part of that exploration.
The battles are planned as real-time encounters. They will include ground and aerial combos, guarding, parrying, dodging and counterattacks.
Faris will also use magic such as Lightning, Ice, Tornado, Deflect, Healing and Flare. The announced design lets players combine those spells with melee attacks. Exploration and combat are meant to work together rather than function as separate systems.
Progression will bring new weapons and combat abilities that expand Faris's options as the adventure moves forward. The feature list identifies seven supported languages: English, Japanese, Arabic, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Simplified Chinese.
What the trailer confirms
The official teaser trailer shows that Danboos is ready to present the project publicly. It also establishes the game's central setting and direction.
A Noisy Pixel report published on September 24, 2026, independently describes Luminous Nights as an action RPG in the spirit of Kingdom Hearts. It points to exploration and real-time combat and identifies a 2027 PC release through Steam.
The report gives no release date more precise than 2027. The available announcement also does not disclose pricing, editions or PC system requirements. There are no independently verified details about the project's budget, scale or technical targets.
That limit is worth keeping in mind. A teaser can show a game's tone and intended mechanics, but it cannot prove how the finished build will perform or how much content it will contain.
Luminous Nights has been announced as in development. It has not been released or made available for independent testing. Claims about responsiveness, frame rate, image quality and stability cannot be assessed from the supplied information.
The planned platform is Steam, and players can already wishlist the game. The developer is based in Tokyo and has worked in the game industry for over 10 years. Luminous Nights is being developed as an independent project by Yahya Danboos.
For more context on how small studios can build distinctive genre projects around a focused concept, see our earlier indie report.
Noisy Pixel's coverage is the only independent confirmation identified for the announcement. The available reporting recaps the reveal rather than quoting Danboos directly or citing an official publisher statement. No publisher has been identified in the supplied material.
Steam plans and open questions
The announcement date is 23 September 2026, and the intended launch year is 2027. Luminous Nights is currently planned for Steam. No other platforms are listed in the supplied material.
Its feature list names eight languages even though it describes support as seven. The announcement therefore contains a count that does not match the languages listed.
SteamDB currently lists an unknown application with ID 5293920. That may point to an early presence in the Steam ecosystem, but the page has no public metadata confirming that the application is Luminous Nights.
A Steam search result also shows a generic "Available: Sep 29, 2026" fragment without identifying the game. It cannot be used as evidence of a Luminous Nights release date.
The mismatch is minor, but it is worth recording before the game reaches its release window. More important unknowns include the exact launch date, the price, hardware requirements and the scope of Noor City. It is also not known whether the showcased systems will remain unchanged during development.
The announcement does not identify a publisher or provide independent performance testing.
For now, Luminous Nights has a credible creative pitch, not a finished product to evaluate. Its strongest evidence is the defined protagonist, the Arabian fantasy setting and the plan to mix traversal with real-time combat.
That makes the Steam wishlist worth watching. It does not prove that the 2027 target will hold or that the PS2-era design ambition will translate into final quality.
The teaser should be read as an announcement document rather than a technical demonstration. It establishes the premise and intended feel, but it cannot show stable frame pacing, input latency or final rendering quality without sustained playable footage and testable build details.
Those measurements will matter later. Fast aerial combat depends on responsive input and consistent frame delivery, not only on a convincing trailer.
