On July 30, Dragon Quest fans in Tokyo will chase down giant monster statues across four locations in Shibuya and Harajuku, using their phones to cast spells through Google's Gemini AI. The event is called Gemini Quest, and it casts players as heroes teaming up to "seal away the Dragon King who has been resurrected in the real world" (Eurogamer).

Here is how it works. Participants download the Google Gemini app — Google's generative AI assistant — and use it to photograph monster statues placed at each venue. The app then generates augmented reality images of the player facing off against the creature, effectively letting them "cast spells" at the monsters through their phone screen. Giant statues of slimes, the blob-like mascots of the Dragon Quest series, are among the creatures appearing at the venues (Eurogamer).

Finish all the quests and you walk away with a tangible reward: a limited-edition physical "mini medal" engraved with Dragon Quest monsters including slimes and killer machines. Mini medals are a long-running collectible in the Dragon Quest games, traded to NPCs for rare items — and here they become a real-world keepsake (Eurogamer).

This is not the first time Square Enix has leaned into Google's AI for the franchise. In March 2026, the publisher announced a "Chatty Slimey" AI companion powered by Google Gemini for Dragon Quest X, a Japan-exclusive online RPG. That chatbot — designed to converse with players in the voice of a slime — entered its rollout phase in late April 2026 (VGC; TwistedVoxel).

Gemini Quest pushes the partnership off the screen and into the street. Instead of chatting with an AI slime inside a game, players are using the same underlying technology to interact with Dragon Quest's world layered over real Tokyo neighbourhoods.

Automaton Media first reported the event on July 27, 2026, two days before the July 30 event date, with Eurogamer and Famitsu carrying additional details (Automaton Media; Eurogamer). The official event website is live at dragonquest.jp/geminiquest.

For Dragon Quest, a series that has spent nearly four decades letting players fight slimes on a turn-based grid, the appeal of fighting them through a phone camera in central Tokyo is the novelty. Whether Gemini Quest signals a broader push into location-based AI events or remains a one-off collaboration is something Square Enix has not commented on. For now, it is a weekend where one of gaming's most storied franchises asks its fans to step outside and point their cameras at a very large slime.