KORIKORI Hi Everyone, this is a story of KoriKori. I felt that there is a need for a casual yet smart game for mobile, something rewarding and respectful to the player, fun, unique and surprising. Almost oldschool game-boy kind of action but done for the modern day. That is what I wanted to make. In the beginning of this year I joined forces with Sean-Li Murmann and together we embarked on a mission of making it, I take all design and art direction as well as PR while Sean writes all the awesome code. This topic will be a devlog, I will be showing our choices and results, taking comments and feedback, etc. We are 3 months into development and hoping to release KoriKori by the end of this year. Korikori will be an action puzzle game about eating a lot of green leaves while others fall in love and play tennis. KoriKori has a website: http://www.korikori.co I post updates etc on my twitter https://twitter.com/takemuraori. Here is a comparison picture of overall progress: On the left a proof of concept, that finally worked, that is perhaps a month + ago, on the right is how the game looks if I open it right now, but this is far away from final of course.
The previous game I designed called Shapist and is now available on ios, android and windows phone, the game was visually inspired by very minimal and colorful compositions, as well as wooden blocks for kids. It looks like this: SO for KoriKori I initially wanted to depart from complete abstraction and in the mid of June I hypothesized that KoriKori will looks like this:
Shapist is fantastic, so I am very interested in following development on your new game. Thanks for posting about it here.
Thank you guys!!! It always really helps to know people enjoyed your previous game. Here is some small gif from a love scene we are working on, hopefully i can soon show it with in-game footage: I want to say that Shapist was made as a design exploration where a game is a physical object, KoriKori is very different but it is also a design exploration and a narrative experiment, I am interested in making a logic almost puzzle game but with urgency of time, and at the same time provide a diverse rich world with proceduraly generated levels. I just recently game an interview to Gamesauce on my design process in could provide broader details it also has my recent design talk on human condition: http://gamesauce.org/news/2015/07/26/ori-takemura-bridges-human-digital-worlds-with-design-casual-connect-video/
A day ago we have conducted a Playtest where I observed people play the game for the first time, and rigth away i have spotted few issues to fix, one is the perception of space and the responsiveness of controls that is related to that because in KoriKori you move fixed distance in one step (like Snake or Crossy Road) but you always move. So this week I am addressing those via adjustments of visual design - will show my thought process here.
To elaborate on design principles behind KoriKori and other of my games I think I can share this small talk I gave at Casual Connect this year about ethics in game design and human condition. KoriKori in that context has a strong narrative element and combined with puzzles together, I hope, they create a meaningful value for the player.
Very nice. I saw your demo in Indie Pitch Arena in Mobile Game Asia in Saigon last month. Keep it up!
The game seems interesting and I sign-up for the pre-launch. If you need some help with beta test, I have iPhone 5s.
Thank you loana!!! We will be having closed testing, I so far test in person with groups of 3 - 5 people who never played the game before at local gamedev meetups, but we will have a wider test soon. We hope to make big progress in August. We are also working on a web site for a game - here are some transitions I experimented with:
Wow this is a huge surprise I really enjoyed Vietnam and it was my first visit, thank you for support and I hope you like what we are about to show you guys here
Here are some news, some background experimentation and a giant Snail obstacle. After a number of playtestes we found number of painpoints and the first one we decided to address were controls, we tried adjusting animation so that player would have a better feel of feedback and adding a grid to show the distance perception, grid helped a bit but controls were still not there, what we tried then is to making the game instead of real time - turn based, it is turn based in a way that every time you swipe you take 1 move, and enemies also take a move etc, if you don't take a move for too long you starve and die... I am now designing levels based on the new rules.
This looks interesting, not only the art style but your explorations around gameplay. I'd also like to be a tester when the time comes. I have an iPhone 6 and development experience. Have you played FlameTail (US) aka Trailblaze: Puzzle Incinerator (EU) aka Moyasu Puzzle Flametail (JPN) on Nintendo DSiWare? It's an expanded version of one of the games from MaBoShi (WiiWare). It also features "turn based snake" type of gameplay. Perhaps there is some learning there?
2 gingerbeardman - sorry for radio silence, we were working hard to have a version to present at TokyoGameShow (booth 2 - N06 at General Exhibition Area, Hall 2) and I am flying to Tokyo in few hours to showcase KoriKori. We will be doing testing shortly after the show before the end of September. You are in the list! Here is our promo ad. I will post more stuff shortly. Will tell you how I worked on visuals and color variations as well as talk about the tools e use in development and organisation.
Here is how our booth at TGS looked like: and here are some awesome people playing the game: As usual I was observing every player and taking notes of every play through, in result after 4 days of show i had a list of must have changes in design and mechanics, and some changes that are desirable but not a must, I will write more about those during this week. And once those changes are implemented we will start closed beta testing with some of you guys In overall Tokyo Game Show is awesome, I am not sure 100% that I would say that if you are an Indie from USA or Europe, and trip would cost you a lot and if you don't speak Japanese that its a must go, but if you want to have chances for your game in Japan and Asian markets this can be one event to address it all.
If we compare the very first build and how game looks now we would get this gif Often when people playtest the Game I hear they mention Tron, sometimes Snake, sometimes something else, usually those comments are based on the game mechanics as for the visuals I mostly hear it is very cute, and that makes me happy, yet I have to say the biggest inspiration - something I keep coming back to for more insights in case of KoriKori is GameBoy and old school platformer games like Kirby's dream land.
