Famitsu: So then, tell us about the important points from development.
Tsukawaki: We've been making Action games for a long time, so we had firsthand experience that the most important thing was to make something that "feels good when the player moves it." To do that, we started by carefully crafting the behavior of the controlled character.
However, at the start we didn't have all the team members and no [polygon] modeller, so we created fundamental actions like dashing, jumping, and attacking using block models, and from there expanded the direction of level design.
Famitsu: First you focused on the sensation of touch, the essence of the fun in Action games.
Tsukawaki: Right. Stuff like, if the input is this much it runs this far, whether or not the reaction speed is good, how high the jump is, if that all makes it easier to control. Truthfully I was learning from the beginning, so I just tested various things as I made it.
Actually, I think the essence of how comfortable it feels to move in 2D and 3D is probably the same. But while 2D has two axes, X and Y, 3D has three axes, X, Y, and Z. That makes things that would be fun in 2D often become extremely difficult in 3D. At first I was making constant adjustments, so much that Ebisu was worried. (Laughs) I think he was feeling like "when will there be pictures?"
Famitsu: (Laughs)
Tsukawaki: But we can't go to production without solid fundamentals, so we spent a lot of time laying the foundation.
Ebisu: After all, in Action games how the controls handle is paramount, so Tsukawaki's team was particular about that.
Tsukawaki: In the process, I played a number of masterpiece 3D titles and did a lot of research--quantifying things like "How many seconds does it take for this character to reach their top speed?"
Famitsu: You've done some detailed research.
Tsukawaki: The whole team did, and the results were very good. I guess you could say we settled on a language, or rather we were somehow able to prepare a common language. Of course, everyone has their own way of feeling things out, but somehow we can see the same stuff.
As part of that, we also began to see "the fun of 3D Action only we can do."
On top this base we created, I added the specification I had in mind from the start: right, left, and two-handed attacks. I figured it would fit if the motion was based on a taiko drum, so I said "It's a tanuki then!" because of the tanuki's belly drumming.
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