According to director Masaki Ukyo, the original concept was to incorporate the idea of two different attributes to make a unique action game, and that other concepts such as grabbing, throwing and "Cash Bash" were added later in development simply because they felt they had many ideas that they liked and wanted to add them all. The gameplay mechanic of the player's power dropping if the spirit gauge falls was added near the end of development, and was based on a system Treasure used in "Guardian Heroes" (1996). The gameplay system was designed first and then the story and characters designed later. The character Shyna originally had a more typical fantasy witch design, but producer Koichi Kimura did not feel comfortable with fantasy settings, so gave the setting and character a futuristic design. He decided to use chibi character designs because he was not skilled at drawing realistic characters.