Harvest moon character creator game

I didn't intentionally make it very dramatic or fantasy-heavy. The motif that I had this time was the Cantina from Star Wars. Sort of inspiration from the Cantina where you have different species of creatures commingling and coexisting, so regardless of race or origin, everyone has the same kind of struggles and life takes you strange places.

You've been a longtime veteran of video game development. You've seen every trend there has been since the SNES era. I was curious, in the last ten years, Japanese development kind of fell out and then came back. Why do you think that happened and why do you think it's coming back? So right around when the Wii launched, around and , the Japanese market was trending toward making games that were very clearly for the otaku market.

The Wii had absorbed all the casual game players, so the remaining developers focused on what would make them money. As a business, many companies leaned toward using tools that were easy to sell; for example, famous voice actors, guest character designers, things like that. So after a few years, once that Wii market has died, those Wii users basically decided not to play any more games. Overall the game market has shrunk as a result. There should have a second tier market, a gamer's market, where people who simply enjoy games would buy titles, but those people have basically faded away with the Wii market.

All that was really left was the very hardcore otaku market, so those semi-casual players left the market as well. After that trend, the trend was mobile games. These very simple mobile games were playable on, not-smartphones but old style cellphones, those became popular and people just walked away from console games. So you have these really hardcore gamers and the super-light users, and in-between there should have been a market for casual gamers, and those gamers actually went to mobile.

When smartphones became popular, that middle-tier market went to smartphone free-to-play games. The Japanese mobile game market is a little bit different than the rest of the world, where free-to-play is free-to-play, but Japan places emphasis on the gacha system, which is sort of like a roulette or gambling-like system.

Japanese developer Yasuhiro Wada is best known as the creator of Harvest Moon , though he hasn't been involved with the series in some time. Following last year's Birthdays: The Beginning , Wada is now working on the upcoming Little Dragons Cafe , a feel-good game about running a cafe and raising a dragon.

And while it shares the lighthearted atmosphere of a Harvest Moon game, Little Dragons Cafe isn't the simulation game you might expect from Wada.

We recently talked to Wada about Little Dragons Cafe, how his passions have evolved, and why he makes the kinds of games he's known for. He also showed off just under an hour of the game, which, at least visually, is reminiscent of Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life on GameCube--it has a chibi sort of style with a charming pastoral touch. But he emphasized that unlike the Harvest Moon games, Little Dragons Cafe is very much story-driven, rather than an open-ended sim.

You play as one of two siblings, male or female, whose mother has fallen into a deep sleep. In order to save her, you have to raise a dragon--or so a mysterious old man tells you--all while maintaining the family cafe business. You generally follow the story at your own pace, splitting time between maintaining the cafe and exploring with your dragon to find new recipes and ingredients.

That stuff happens more at an internal level with my team. I have members working on completely different aspects of the game, so we talk to each other and sometimes provide each other with information that we would never have thought of on our own. There tend to be a simulation elements in the games you've developed.

What is it about this design framework that makes it come up so often in your work? But there are many different kinds of creators. For me, I found I was really good at making simulation games. Over the years, I just naturally became specialized in that genre. It's not that I deliberately tried to keep making simulation games; it just so happened to organically end up that way.

I always want to create games with unique concepts. In a way, that's part of why I keep creating simulation games. Your games tend to feel very meditative as well. Is this a tone you strive for, or is it more just coincidence?

It's more coincidence for me than trying to deliberately make a game feel meditative or relaxing. But I do want people to have fun; this is what I think about all the time.

Harvest Moon sometimes felt like it had a message to it reminding us to return to and appreciate nature. Do you think Birthdays has a particular message? With this game and my other games, I don't necessarily create them to send out a message. The basis for my games has always been entertainment. I want my games to be fun and to leave a lasting impression.

There are some messages to be had in Birthdays: when there's more green in your cube, it lowers the temperature and evokes how the greenhouse effect works. When people cut down the rain forest, global warming happens. There are subtle messages like that, but I never try to go out of my way to send out a message to all the world.

My games simply have information that I think is beneficial for people. But it's not necessarily something I forcibly push out to the user. I don't want them to think; I want them to feel. If it comes across naturally, it's much better than there being an explicit message. You must be getting this quite often nowadays, but as the father of Harvest Moon, what are your thoughts on Stardew Valley?

Do you find it humbling that such a game exists? I actually met Eric Barone recently; I told him I was very happy. Instead of Harvest Moon being forgotten, it has become powered up and it has gotten even better.

It's still living on, even though I'm not working on it anymore. I'm really happy that's happening. The first version of Harvest Moon had the biggest map grid out of all the games, and provided the most freedom to players. As the games got newer, the grids we were working with got smaller and smaller, reducing the freedom you had.