Courage, Endurance, and Game Design

Takeshi & Hiroshi is about brotherly love, reality’s many dragons, and designing the perfect RPG.

Gaming and gamers can often attract many negative connotations and presumptions. Issues surrounding addiction, ill-advised content, and the exploitative nature of this now global juggernaut industry are not exaggerated. Still, even behind all the controversy, it’s worth remembering just what the core intent of this often-misunderstood hobby really was: to captivate a player’s imagination and make them feel larger than what they were.

Takeshi & Hiroshi is a timely release, originally on Apple Arcade before making its way to a much larger audience on Nintendo Switch. It’s the kind of experience which reminds us of the wholesome values that made gaming such a healthy and magical escape when done for all the right reasons.

When Takeshi puts together his game for his brother, it’s more than just creating a distraction, it’s about teaching Hiroshi how to be brave within and beyond the game itself.

In this brief but memorable narrative adventure, Takeshi is an aspiring game developer creating games primarily for his number one fan: his younger brother Hiroshi.

Growing up in a single parent home without a father, Takeshi takes it upon himself to be a protective parental figure to Hiroshi, especially since the younger sibling suffers from some health complications and is generally nervous about life. As the older brother, Takeshi wants to create games that not only bring happiness to Hiroshi, but also empower him to get through difficult times.

That’s really what Takeshi & Hiroshi portrays so well, the ability of games to inspire players to be a hero beyond just the pixelated/polygonal escape. And so, when Takeshi puts together his game for his brother, it’s more than just creating a distraction, it’s about teaching Hiroshi how to be brave within and beyond the game itself. The game within the game is called Mighty Warrior, a typical turn-based Japanese RPG likely based on Dragon Quest with some of the aesthetics inspired by The Legend of Zelda, and this meta-game in of itself is a fascinating insight into what it means to be game designer.

In putting his game together, Takeshi needs to figure out how he can direct the best possible RPG experience for Hiroshi: challenging and yet enjoyable at the same time.

Takeshi assembles the RPG in real time, all in direct response to his brother as the player. It’s an interesting setup where he needs to make sure the adventure isn’t so easy that it bores Hiroshi, nor so difficult that it causes discouraging frustration. And so, in Takeshi & Hiroshi, you are in the chair of the director, orchestrating a Japanese RPG which strikes a fine balance between being challenging and being enjoyable, by providing Hiroshi with an opportunity to feel a satisfying triumph over genuine obstacles, in a difficult yet achievable manner. This basically involves pacing and setting up the right combination of enemy encounters before leading into the final boss battle.

In a way this is a fine lesson in game development and design, as so often games introduce a level of challenge which ends up feeling frustratingly imposed. The term “difficulty spike” often comes up as a major flaw in reviews, and so creating an organic difficulty progression is not an easy thing to achieve even for the best of designers. Takeshi & Hiroshi provides a valuable lesson to aspiring developers in this regard, and it is quite satisfying to pace the difficulty in such a way that the player, Hiroshi, is able to overcome the challenge with genuine effort and also feel a sense of accomplishment in doing so.

Takeshi & Hiroshi is a short game by any standard, over in just a couple of hours or so, but it leaves a mark both in its overarching message and its meta-game commentary.

The story unfolds through warm stop-motion clay animation, hearkening back to Japanese Saturday morning classics, and of course the recent adorable Netflix series Rilakkuma and Kaoru. The visual style of the game is utterly charming and sublimely animated too, making the story sequences between the engaging RPG segments just as important and memorable.

For aspiring game developers, Takeshi & Hiroshi is a fun little exercise on how to create a fine difficulty balance and progression, where it really comes down to positive and empowering reinforcement from overcoming difficult challenges in the virtual world. As a holistic experience, the game is a heartfelt insight into the innate magic and wonder of computer games, and how the electronic medium is still very much capable of inspiring not just our creative imagination, but at times even inspiring us to have the courage to face the many dragons of the real world.

Written by Jahanzeb Khan for Vista Magazine.