Introduced today is an independent developer who is hardly famous in China and may not have as much revenue from all games as a legendary game.
But on the other hand, if you’re a certain type of player – like pixels, light puzzle solving, and heavy storytelling, then you must have played his work, and probably liked it very much.
Daigo is the president of DaigoOdencat Co., Ltd. Said to be the president, in fact, there is basically only one person in the whole company. At present, the company’s 10.5 games, such as the well-known “Mr. Xiong’s Restaurant” and “Happy Blue Bird”… are mainly from the hands of Daigo.
If you often go to Google Japan, you will find that Japanese individual developers especially prefer the mode of small plot categories, such as the series of “Little Bomb Girl” and “Doomsday Bakery” that we have introduced before. The space tells a touching healing story. The difference with Daigo is that his game has a unique temperament: in the dark and desperate death, there is a hint of hope for the better.
01 The restaurant between heaven and hell
“Mr. Bear’s Restaurant” takes place in a restaurant between heaven and hell, where the dead come to enjoy their last supper. In order to make a meal, the cat you play will enter the customer’s memory and look for clues to the food.
The girl who has been busy scanning her mobile phone, the student who was bullied and fell from the upstairs… You will see their different life memories.
When A-Zhai, who spoke ill of his family, woke up, and when the office worker who didn’t go home earlier learned of his daughter’s tragedy, a wonderful feeling would flow through his heart. Because this is a story whose ending cannot be changed, and life cannot be repeated. Outside of the story, we can only go to the next memory with regret and the feeling of wanting to make up for it.
On the other hand, the wonderful thing is that “checking the memory” is only part of the gameplay. In the seemingly unrelated story sets, the clues of the protagonist’s identity are buried in it. It was a shocking feeling when the final answer was revealed.
It is precisely because of this that Mr. Bear’s Restaurant has been downloaded more than a million times and honored as Google’s Best Indie Game.
“Sound Town” is Daigo’s early work, adapted from another “Next Day” series author ImCyan’s work. The world-weary youth came to the quiet seaside town, and encountered all kinds of separation from the people in the town, and the youth’s concept gradually changed.
There is no dramatic awakening or everyone is happy, just in the sound of the waves, the changes in the protagonist’s mentality are slowly revealed. Such a small and secret description has touched countless players who have felt the same way.
The tone of “Blue Bird of Happiness” is completely opposite to the title, and it is a story that is very thoughtful. A pair of brothers stole the witch’s blue bird. The elder brother came to the blue bird’s house after a dream. After some adventures, he found a “heavy axe that can be used to kill people”. At this time, someone told him that if he wanted to leave the dream, he would have to kill the blue bird…
Each of Daigo’s games is dedicated to depicting human regret. Some regrets can be salvaged, some cannot be changed. A glimmer of hope is revealed in the sad atmosphere, and players are desperately chasing it. After playing, I feel a little empty in my heart, and when I face reality, I will have different perceptions.
And this kind of game is what Daigo has accumulated after years of exploration, and it only belongs to his own unique style.
02 The weight of the indie game dream
After a decade at the company, Daigo has become an independent game maker.
The same social animal must understand the urge to get out of the cage, not to mention when there is a game dream in the heart. However, Daigo is obviously a cautious person. His resignation was not “resolutely breaking his wrist for the sake of his dream”, but because of more realistic reasons, the company was dissolved and reorganized.
Daigo, who lost his job, is over 30 years old. Looking at the balance of his card, he decided to seize the last chance in his life to pursue his dreams. What game do you do well? Square’s Final Fantasy and Romance Sagas are good, but I don’t have enough manpower, so delete the battle part and keep the part that is really needed, so the RPG-style short story game has become Daigo’s first choice.
In the past two years, Daigo has made four games in a row, “Blue Bird of Happiness”, “Tidal Town”, “The Clock of Atonement” and “The Road of Angels”.
It was not smooth at the beginning. These four games, as described above, are mostly full of strong personal thoughts and value thinking, like gloomy novels. For the producer, outputting such a game is full of a sense of accomplishment, but for the player, it may just be a good story, rather than “a game that you want to play after you’ve played it”. The market has also proved that although these works have a good reputation, their sales are not good.
At the same time came a deep sense of loneliness. There is still a lot of financial savings, but the “inner savings” has been used up. Independent game developers are lonely, and colleagues who were laid off together started new careers, and some people are working on “Pokémon”
Go”, someone entered Google, and Daigo’s annual income dropped to 1/20 of what it used to be, unable to integrate into the people around him. While friends were chatting about stocks and options, Daigo was playing a small game that not many people would play, and even led the subsistence allowances in the United States to live.
Under multiple pressures, Daigo decided to change his mind. Let’s talk about earning money first – if he can’t earn any more money, he has to go back to being a social animal and give up his dream of making games. So he overturned “Mr. Xiong’s Restaurant”, which was already close to being formed, and made it into a type of “let players have fun and earn money”.
Does that sound a little hard to understand? To put it simply, although the course of the story is still dark in style, the ending has changed from a hopeless tragedy to a happier comedy.
The first version of “Mr. Bear’s Restaurant” was a dark story, for example, you can serve poisoned wine to your guests… In the new version, players can finally fill in the gaps to a certain extent through efforts, and other people’s stories also will be filled in memory fragments.
03 Story rhythm born to fight advertising
Another unexpected problem Daigo encountered was the design of the payment model. Although it deviates from the main theme of this article, I still want to share it with you, because this part may not be touched by many players, and it is also helpful to understand the status of many independent gamers in China.
Daigo once added the design of “puzzle-solving hints” in “Blue Bird of Happiness” and “The Clock of Atonement”. Compared with the number of downloads, these two games actually did not bring much revenue. This is also the place where many independent mini-games are in difficulty in payment – items such as crazy ads, in-app purchases to remove ads, sponsorship fees and other items are still far from enough. Charged. “How to let each player watch an ad 10-20 times without losing the game experience” is the problem he is trying to solve.
Of course, if it is a free mobile game that continues to operate, the industry has already figured out an effective method, that is, a gashapon, that is, a card draw… It’s a long way to go, in short, after weighing the pros and cons, Daigo decided to use another one that is more secure. way, a system called “memory fragments”.
Players can view the “memory fragments” to learn about the stories of people who came to the restaurant before they died. They can get it by watching the advertisement, and they can continue to play without watching it.
In addition, players who have played “Mr. Bear’s Restaurant” can feel the “unique story density” in the future. Insert a lot of “little deaths” into short stories, no matter which part of the plot, there are a lot of points to watch.
This actually involves another point that players generally don’t pay attention to: what the game will look like in the end actually has a lot to do with the payment model.
It is limited to the carrier of “free mobile games” that gives this work a unique flavor. Daigo felt that if it were a buyout game, the story structure might be completely different from what it is now.
In the end, Mr. Bear’s Restaurant became Daigo’s most downloaded game of all time, earning more than 300,000 yen on its first day of sale, “an extra-dimensional figure.”
After its great success, the game was also ported to platforms such as NS and Steam. A large number of players posted thanks and messages on social networking sites, some were moved, and some saw their own life shadows in the game.
04 Conclusion
After the development of “Mr. Xiong’s Restaurant”, Daigo took out the fishing gameplay separately and made it into “Fishing Paradise”. He needed to deepen his bond with 24 friends while fishing. Each friend designed 3 stories, a total of 72 Yes, the plot is full. If you have played “Mr. Bear’s Restaurant”, you will also see a lot of surprise eggs.
The game, which won an award at the Google Independent Games Festival, had roughly three times as many downloads as Mr. Bear’s Restaurant in its first week.
Comparison of the first week downloads of the two games
In order to feel the tropical atmosphere, Daigo actually went to Hawaii to play for a month
The new work “Meg and the Monster” has completely begun to enter Steam and NS.
Now Daigo (at least for a while) doesn’t have to worry about saying goodbye to his dream game path. He wrote on his blog, “I’ve worked hard, and more importantly, I’ve been lucky enough to go on to the next challenge. I can make a living off my game, and San Francisco will no longer be attractive to me. I now have a It’s an emotion that I absolutely don’t want to die right now.”
Daigo once said that a good game is a game that can stay in memory. Therefore, this unforgettable game dream chasing experience has also become the greatest joy in his life so far.
There are currently four Daigo games on the site, welcome to experience them.
References:
1. “くまのレストラン” って思う. Absolutely に Today, Die にたくなhttps://ift.tt/US2u8oF
2. Nintendo Switch “くまのレストラン” 発売 commemoration, production stage in タビュー
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