Reigniting Old Dreams With Summer Road: Rebuild the Fun and Chaos of Game Development [Award Winner Documentary #11] Part 2
■Genya Hosaka (left)
Ever since he started playing games on the NES (Famicom) at the age of three, Hosaka played many games and eventually gained the desire to make his own. He made strategy games on grid paper to play with his friends back in elementary school, and teamed up with friends in middle school to make several free games. He experienced developing games in a team when he attended game development seminars hosted by a major game company. He then found employment at another game company, and went independent after experiencing eight years of game development there. After establishing REBUILD GAMES LLC, he now does contracted work from other companies while developing his own indie titles.
■Akinori Asaba (right)
In elementary school, Asaba was hooked on playing fighting games at the arcade. He played them between classes at cram school and it led to his interest in the games industry. During his time at technical school, he experienced game development by participating in seminars hosted by a major game company. He then found employment in the games industry, and in 2009, an app he made for fun would achieve second place in the Top Free Games category on the App Store, reaching 200,000 downloads. He established REBUILD GAMES LLC in 2015, and now does contract work from other companies while developing his own games.
This is Part 2 of the interview.
▼Read Part 1 here!
■Belief in Having Laser Focus!
――Summer Road’s game design is pretty unique. The game progresses automatically, and the player changes equipment or chooses which routes to take so it’s easy to play. It takes place in a nostalgic setting, and when combined with the automatic progression, it leads to a fresh and fun experience.
🔹Asaba: We named our company REBUILD GAMES because we wanted to “rebuild” the fun experiences we had in the past. We make games that we want to make, that only we can make, using new game mechanics and by adding and subtracting to our experiences. We want to make games that wouldn’t get approved if we proposed them to the companies we worked for.
――If you’re going to develop indie games, you might as well make something you want that matches your interests. And the strength of your interest dictates how unique your game is.
🔹Asaba: That’s why Summer Road isn’t just your regular hack and slash.
Sometimes playing a game is too much effort, so we made it playable with just one hand on the mouse. The reason why the game is the way it is now is because we wondered if we could make a game where you just collect and swap around items.
It’s like Kokuyo’s KADOKESHI eraser. It’s an eraser that has 28 corners, so erasing details is easy work. We thought it would be cool to have a game that’s as laser-focused as something like that.
――People who love games tend to take existing game concepts and make them more complex. Why didn’t you choose a control scheme that was closer to normal RPGs?
🔸Hosaka: It’s because we’re indie game developers. We can’t put in a ton of effort to fully flesh out and polish every part of our game like big game companies. Since we need to focus our efforts somewhere, I would prefer a part of the game I enjoyed working on. In Summer Road, this was the equipment swapping mechanic.
🔹Asaba: That said, it was hard to make a game around it. Making a normal RPG would’ve been easier (laughs). Making equipment swapping fun and intuitive as the only form of gameplay involved, was the most difficult mission for us when making Summer Road. The character behavior AI is especially difficult and we’re still having trouble with it.
――You said the game is fun even though equipment swapping is the only thing you can do. How did you identify the “fun” parts of that?
🔹Asaba: We needed to make numeric stat gains fun and the equipment switching UI intuitive. To pique player curiosity, the game is designed so the player explores different combinations of equipment; ones that have different effects or synergize when worn as a set.
With regard to equipment combinations, care was put into every item, like the power gained from a special effect and when equipment starts dropping with a certain special effect.
――It’s common for hack and slash games to just pile on equipment effects, leading to an enormous number of combinations. Since a selling point of your game is “10-minute sessions”, players have to discover gear combinations within this timeframe. It’s hard to achieve this but it results in a tightly-packed experience. Did you experience any issues when you were applying to the contest?
🔸Hosaka: We put ourselves on a tight submission schedule when we decided to enter the contest. It wasn’t so much “we need to do everything needed to pass the submission criteria,” as much as “we’ll do what we can and leave everything to luck”.
🔹Asaba: We originally wanted to hold off on entering contests until we had reached a certain level of completion, but we became more confident in what we had after being nominated for the Visual Design Award at BitSummit.
――So is it important to show people what you made in a public setting?
🔹Asaba: It is. You can see that people who do that a lot are better for it.
――What did you find beneficial from the support given by the contest?
🔸Hosaka: The monthly demo sessions. We have guests from a variety of disciplines each time and it’s nice that we can see new players’ reactions as well. We normally have to show our game at an event to get this kind of feedback.
🔹Asaba: It’s helpful that game industry professionals also attend the demo sessions.
――As part of the support given to contest award winners, you attended gamescom* and toured the Supercell* offices in August 2024. How was the experience?
*Held in Cologne, Germany every year in August, gamescom is one of the world’s largest game shows. The Platinum Award Winner and Award Winners of the 2nd GYAAR Studio Indie Game Contest attended and exhibited their games there.
*Supercell is a game company based in Helsinki, Finland known for mobile games such as Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, and Brawl Stars. The Platinum Award Winner and Award Winners of the 2nd GYAAR Studio Indie Game Contest were invited to their office to learn about how Supercell makes games and get feedback on their games from Supercell employees.
🔹Asaba: It greatly changed how I saw things since compared to Japanese events, different games are featured. Some of these games you wouldn’t even find in Japan. At the same time, it made me realize that the global market was bigger than I imagined, and it made me think about how I could realistically make my game reach this audience.
――You could say you felt the locality of the country through the game shows. How was the Supercell office tour?
🔸Hosaka: It was an awesome office. They had five groups of people play Summer Road for 15 minutes each, and their feedback was relayed to us through an interpreter. They gave specific advice and we immediately implemented it into our game.
🔹Asaba: We were given feedback from developers assigned to active projects. I was elated when a programmer assigned to Brawl Stars since the beginning of the project told me that they would check out the game when it releases.
*Brawl Stars
Many unique characters battle it out in this smart phone game released by Supercell in 2018.
――What kind of feedback did they give you?
🔹Asaba: They gave feedback on the effects text for the equipment. We wrote it to evoke the text you would see in Dragon Quest and other JRPGs, but apparently the nuance is lost when translated into other languages. In the latest version, we have icons on the bottom of the screen for each equipment effect, and you can mouse over them if you want to see the details. This made the gameplay flow much better.
――Part of the award winner support package includes exhibitions of the winning games at the GYAAR Studio booth of various events (BitSummit in July, gamescom in August, and TGS in September 2024). Does having this support take a load off for you?
🔹Asaba: It’s useful to have the support. It’s a lot of effort for us to exhibit at events, and it takes away from time we could have spent on development, especially since we had to attend domestic and international events back-to-back for three months this year. I don’t think it would’ve been possible if we tried to attend them by ourselves.
――What kind of support are you looking for from GYAAR Studio in the future?
🔹Asaba: It would be nice if there was a debugging service for ROMs used at special events.
🔸Hosaka: Bug reports would be helpful too, and if we had videos of people playing our game at events, we could analyze where people are getting stuck and identify the causes for bugs.
――How is it interacting with the other award-winning teams?
🔹Asaba: In other game contests, you would often have a winner’s party and that was it. For the GYAAR Studio Indie Game Contest, winners receive continuous support after the contest. It’s good that we get to meet other developers aspiring for the same goal and discuss our problems together. We demoed different versions of Summer Road at BitSummit, gamescom, and TGS, and that was possible because we were inspired by the other teams we were interacting with.
――Having GYAAR Studio Base act as a physical location for demo sessions and community building allows the teams to interact and inspire each other. We can probably gain more inspiration if we add new teams to the space, but do you have any advice for fellow contest applicants if we were to hold another Indie Game Contest?
🔹Asaba: I think the best way to improve is to take every opportunity where other people can play your game. Treat contests as shots in the dark, so have a positive outlook on them when applying. I want to see other people’s laser-focused games.
🔸Hosaka: I think applicants should experience completing as many games as they can. It’s really difficult to finish development on a game, and having versus not having that experience really sets people apart. Lately, there are communities that hold one-week game jams or sites like Unityroom. I once had pretend game jams with my friends and made a bunch of games through them, and that really helped build my development skills.
――Can you give us a closing message?
🔹Asaba: Summer Road started as a project of self-satisfaction, but now I want it to be a game that can make the GYAAR Studio Indie Game Contest participants and other people involved happy. Look forward to it!
🔸Hosaka: Winning the award has motivated me to make something that lives up to the standards set by the contest. I’m going to try my best!
――Thank you!
▼Summer Road
This 10-minute RPG is crafted for even the busiest of schedules!In this rogue-lite game combining auto-progression and item creation, players utilize only the expansive inventory space to create and equip items that move the story forward.
While actions like movement and attacks are automatic, specific acts change based on combinations of equipment. Its unique, easy-to-play structure as well as the numerous options and events within the story give this bite-sized RPG high replay value!
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