Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 404 Kairosoft

That day, 11 o'clock.

Outside the photography studio, a black Alphard silently glided to the side of the road, and the doors opened automatically.

Li Suhao jogged over.

The car door closed smoothly, shutting out Yoshio Konno and Shiokawa's still waving arms, as well as the noise of the photo studio. Chu Chen leaned back in the soft seat of the Alphard and rubbed his temples.

My thoughts were still on what Yoshio Konno had just said.

"Mr. Chen, shall we go to Cairo first this afternoon, or to Capcom?"

After the morning's itinerary, Chu Chen's afternoon schedule included taking Li Suhao to visit two Japanese game companies.

In fact, during his time in Japan, Chu Chen met with many people in the Japanese gaming industry and socialized every night.

Chu Chen did this mainly to give Li Suhao a push.

Even though Li Suhao has been in Japan for over a year, the Starry Sky Games platform in Japan mainly relies on the Starry Sky Tap Android channel.

Compared to the "Starlight Project," which is already quite popular in China...

When Xingchen contacted Japanese manufacturers, the response was much "colder," not because Li Suhao didn't pursue this direction.

As the world's second-largest game-producing country.

Japanese game developers have a significant global influence. If StarCraft can bring them into its fold, it will definitely be a boost to the current lineup of StarCraft's game platform.

However, in practice, Li Suhao's work did not go very smoothly.

On the one hand, Tencent has a "money-spraying plan" in Japan, which has indeed affected many Japanese game companies.

Secondly, the Japanese are somewhat selective in their approach. Li Suhao made several trips and reached framework agreements in many cases, but when it came to more in-depth cooperation, Chu Chen still had to show his face.

Sometimes, Chu Chen didn't even know what these Japanese manufacturers were thinking.

When you were collaborating with Tencent, you didn't insist on meeting Ma Huateng, did you? And what's even more ridiculous is that when Chu Chenzhen visited these past few days, the other party was always so subservient.
This left Chu Chen completely baffled.

Take, for example, the company they're going to today.

This is a legendary little company called Kairosoft.

This company is renowned for its unique pixel art style and addictive simulation games, including *Game Dev Story*, *Hot Springs*, and *Gourmet Factory*.

By 25 years prior, over 90 games had been released, with over 100 million downloads worldwide. Without exception, these games featured simple pixel graphics, and the size of a single software was generally no more than 100MB.

The graphics are simple, even rudimentary, but its core contains the essence of simulation management games.

Furthermore, if you play a few more Kairosoft games, you'll find that their strategy is actually based on continuous "micro-innovations" around a few successful games.

Or rather, a skin change.

Even so, Kairosoft games are still quite successful because they provide a pure, positive feedback-filled "from zero to one" building and development experience.

Like SurvivorLike games, it simplifies the whetstone theory to the extreme.

All that's left is grinding monsters, getting stronger, choosing skills, grinding monsters, getting stronger.
Cairosoft's games are also games simplified to the extreme.

Chu Chen visited them because Xingchen also had a collaboration with them, which involved using Xingchen's game engine to re-enlarge some classic Kairosoft games into high-definition pixel versions and release them as exclusive PC versions on Xingchen.

This is considered part of the Starry Sky Games platform strategy.

This collaboration, which began at the beginning of the year, has yielded some results. However, the high-definition remastering involves some issues related to the distribution of profits.

So the two sides have been locked in a tug-of-war, but at least this tug-of-war is meaningful, and the two sides have reached some cooperation agreements. However, in the end, Chu Chen still needs to make the final decision.

Have you ever played Game Dev Story?

Inside the car, Li Suhao sat upright, holding a document about Cairosoft software, preparing to give Chu Chen a final report on the key points of the negotiation on the way.

Suddenly, I heard the boss next to me ask this question.

"what?"

"I've played with this a little, but not in detail."

Seeing Li Suhao's bewildered expression, coupled with the nervousness of being suddenly called on by the teacher, Chu Chen couldn't help but chuckle.

The reason he suddenly blurted out that sentence actually had nothing to do with Li Suhao; it was just that, in that instant, a thread in his mind was suddenly connected.

The idol-training game and the Kairosoft software they were about to visit—two seemingly unrelated points—were connected in Chu Chen's mind, forming a blurry line.

"Since you've played it, tell me about the game Dev Story and why it's fun?"

Seeing that Chu Chen was going to continue on this topic, Li Suhao was even more confused. He didn't know that Chu Chen had reached a cooperation agreement with Sony that morning on "idol game development".

Naturally, they had no idea what Chu Chen was thinking, and only assumed that the boss was testing them.

"Because...their model is very mature, with low development costs. They avoid the graphics arms race by using pixel art, focusing on the core gameplay loop, which leads to player retention..."

Before he could finish speaking, Li Suhao stopped on his own.

Because he realized that Chu Chen wasn't listening at all.

Although Chu Chen was looking at him, he didn't seem inclined to speak. Clearly, Chu Chen was thinking about something, so Li Suhao quickly shut his mouth.

The car fell silent, with only the faint noise of the tires rolling over the road.

as predicted.

Chu Chen didn't comment on Li Suhao's answer, but instead started analyzing it to himself in front of Li Suhao.

"The gameplay of Game Dev Story is actually very simple. At the beginning, the player only has a small, shabby office, a secretary, and two mediocre programmers."

"All you have to do is develop the game and then make money."

"Making money is also simple. Open the development interface, select the game type and theme, such as 'RPG' and 'Fantasy', or 'Simulation Management' and 'Movie'."

"The quality of these combinations directly affects the core fun of the game."

"Once selected, development began."

"Four stages: planning, original artwork, music, and debugging."

"You need to assign people to their respective workstations and watch the numerical points for 'creativity,' 'fun,' 'visuals,' and 'sound' appear above their heads. These points are your game's score."

"Throughout this process, the game has consistently provided players with a very direct sense of 'creation.' I am personally creating a game, and every step of its growth stems from my decisions."

"During the development process, you can choose to spend money on advertising to increase brand awareness."

"When employees are tired, they will fall asleep on their desks. You have to spend money to buy props to help them recover their energy."

(End of this chapter)