Reigniting Old Dreams With Summer Road: Rebuild the Fun and Chaos of Game Development [Award Winner Documentary #11] Part 1
■Genya Hosaka
Ever since he started playing games on the NES (Famicom) at the age of three, Hosaka has 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
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.
Summer Road is a summer adventure RPG set in a town reminiscent of old-school America. It’s unique in that one session takes 10 minutes and most of the game plays by itself. It’s a short, casual experience that lets you experience the fun of collecting drops and equipping them onto your characters while thinking about build synergy.
Summer Road is developed by the two developers of REBUILD GAMES. They met each other when they were still in school at a game development seminar hosted by a major game company. After finding employment at separate game companies, they went independent as a support developer for other companies while developing their own indie games. They would then go on to win a GYAAR Studio Indie Game Contest award.
We interviewed Genya Hosaka and Akinori Asaba about how they started game development and their approach to “making the game they want to play” when it comes to making indie games.
――Firstly, congratulations on your award! Can you tell us what parts of Summer Road each of you worked on?
🔸Hosaka: I’m Hosaka, president of REBUILD GAMES. I’m in charge of programming on Summer Road.
🔹Asaba: I’m Asaba of REBUILD GAMES. I work as a planner.
――Can you tell us about Summer Road’s development structure?
🔸Hosaka: There are four of us: myself and Asaba, and external graphics and sound members.
――What was your motivation for applying to the GYAAR Studio Indie Game Contest?
🔹Asaba: It would have to be the Supercell* studio tour for the award winners. The prize money was enticing as well, but it’s a truly special experience to be able to tour the office of a famous game company.
*Supercell
A game company based in Helsinki, Finland. Famous for mobile games such as Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, and Brawl Stars. As part of the 2nd GYAAR Studio Indie Game Contest’s support program, the Platinum Award Winner and Award Winners were invited to the Supercell office for a presentation on development styles and feedback on their games from Supercell employees.
――It’s true that opportunities to interact with creators outside Japan are rare, so that kind of support is valuable too. What was the first game you ever played?
🔸Hosaka:I played Super Mario Bros. when I was about three. I played all my games on Nintendo consoles.
🔹Asaba: I started playing games around the same time, but I got Super Mario Bros. and Transformers: Mystery of Convoy (laughs). It was fun to jump around and off things as Mario, but in Transformers, little bullets flew at me from the beginning of the level and I game overed instantly. I had fun, and I was exposed to a range of games from a young age.
――What games did you play outside of video games?
🔸Hosaka: When I was in elementary school, I made a strategy game out of paper and played it with my classmates. You could make your own units by assigning points to parameters like “range” or “damage”, and we drew pictures for them too.
🔹Asaba: I loved game strategy guides, so I made guides for imaginary games that I had thought up. I’d take an RPG I had made up in my mind and write about how you’d beat it, like “this is the recommended level” or “these items are sold in this town”. My friends did the same thing, and we often showed the strategy guides we made for our “games” to each other.
――It sounds like you were exploring creative ways to play, even back in elementary school! Can you tell us how you met?
🔸Hosaka: I met Asaba in 2005 at a seminar held by a major game company. It was a one-year game development course for university students, and we had 10 people in our team.
――How was your experience attending the seminars?
🔹Asaba: I was pretty confident since I made games back in high school, but there were many highly knowledgeable people like Hosaka at the seminars, so that made me feel anxious. I spent the whole year trying hard to keep up.
🔸Hosaka: Some of the people there were semi-professional game developers. I had only programmed for a few years and it was all self-taught, so I also felt a little nervous.
I remember they taught us that when working in a team, we have to consider if we are the source of the problem when one comes up. “If the programmer says something can’t be done, then nothing gets started. So try to find ways of making it possible instead of saying it’s impossible.”
――I guess you were shown the pecking order since there were so many talented people.
🔸Hosaka: A memorable moment was when we were discussing a standard proposal that I had made. I was advised that there wasn’t much point in making a game that was “safe” because you already knew it would be fun. It would be better to use the seminars to explore new ideas and try something that hasn’t been done before. That changed my outlook on game development.
――That’s an interesting perspective. I agree that exploring new ideas will help you grow more, and since it isn’t work, you don’t have to worry about the consequences if you fail.
🔸Hosaka: At the end of the seminars, one of the instructors said that they wanted us to experience more failure. I didn’t understand the meaning behind that until I had several years of experience under my belt; that it’s painful to experience failure when you’re in a position of responsibility.
――How was your experience developing games at the seminars?
🔹Asaba: I developed many games over my career, but I had the most fun at the seminars. It was chaotic and I didn’t know left from right, and deadlines were tight. After I finished school or my part-time job, I would hop on my scooter and ride from Yokohama to Kanda, debugging our game at the seminar building until late at night.
🔸Hosaka:I’d be drinking the potions* being sold at the time and continued working in the building overnight.
*Potion
The Final Fantasy XII potion. Square Enix teamed up with Suntory Foods to make a beverage based on the healing item from Final Fantasy.
――You released that game for handheld consoles, right?
🔸Hosaka: Yes. Makes you think doesn’t it.
🔹Asaba: I ended up being good friends with the team members not only during development, but outside of development as well.
――I’m sure they were very eventful days. What was it like actually working in the games industry after that?
🔸Hosaka: I first started programming when I entered university, so I worked to my physical limit every day for the first few years.
🔹Asaba: Labor standards weren’t as strict as they are now, and we had 20 to 30 people on our team, so we all knew each other’s names and personalities. We got to try our hand at a variety of things if we worked hard, and we directly talked to each other to resolve issues.
――Why did the two of you end up going independent?
🔸Hosaka: It became easier to create games by ourselves because of developments such as smartphones becoming more prominent and the release of game engines like Unity.
🔹Asaba: At the same time, project sizes were growing for console game development, and these games felt less creative than before. Since it was easier to make indie games now, I wanted to try making games in the frantic way we did back when we were students.
――Did you start the company right after you went independent?
🔸Hosaka: We worked for the first year or so not as a company, but as individuals.
🔹Asaba: We were working full-time hours on part-time benefits (laughs). We were using the time to learn Unity.
🔸Hosaka: It was back when Unity cost around 160,000 yen. Since we went through the effort of getting the licenses, I thought we should enter a contest. I spent around two months with Asaba creating a game called BUGGG, and we entered it into the Nico Nico Indies Game Fest 4, winning the PS Loves Indies prize.
I entered my own game the next year, winning a prize for that, and the year after that we won the Final Round award for ISSEN HERO, which we made together.
🔹Asaba: The contest motivated us to finish our games, and winning awards helped increase our self-esteem.
🔸Hosaka: There are no deadlines when you’re making games by yourself. But entering a contest gives you a date you have to finish the game by.
🔹Asaba: But it wasn’t business-viable and game development wasn’t putting food on our tables. Actually… what were we surviving on back then?
🔸Hosaka: What did we do for income?
🔹Asaba: I don’t remember (laughs). We stayed alive even without income (laughs).
――You then helped develop other games as a company while making your own games, but that sounds like hard work!
🔹Asaba: It was… and it didn’t work out at all. Work was top priority, so we didn’t have time to make our own games.
――How did you end up balancing the two?
🔹Asaba: Part of it was us getting used to the work.
🔸Hosaka: We also changed the details of our contracts. We initially spent five days a week on external development jobs, but we reduced that to four or three days. There was a dramatic change in the amount of progress we made on our own game when we allotted one day a week to focus on it.
――It’s often said that time is something you have to make, and it seems like that’s exactly what you needed to do.
(Continued in Part 2…)
In Part 2, we talk about how Summer Road came to be and their thoughts on the Supercell office tour!
▼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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