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At this time we only have an English version, however I'm hoping to translate the game to other languages in the future! I know with To the Moon a lot of localization teams ended up helping Kan translate the game into German, Italian, Chinese, etc.
Thank-you! I would like to do a video on those sorts of things! Are there any game design/behind the scenes topics in particular you'd be interested in hearing about?
Hi Lidosode, and thank-you for the comment! I'll try my best to answer your questions! Ever since I was little I really wanted to make a video game. I used to design Mega Man levels on paper, and write out RPG plots, haha. Rakuen actually started as a song ("Jump," which was written for the "Play for Japan" album). As I was composing the song, I imagined a story of a boy living in the hospital, and his mother helping him to cope by taking him on a grand adventure right where he was. My friend Emmy (who is the concept artist for the game) and I originally intended to only make a little animated music video for the song, but after thinking more about the story and seeing her concept art, I said, "we should turn this into a game!"
It's been really great doing voice acting for this project! When I recorded reading the storybook as "Mom" I tried imagining I was actually reading a story to a child. Rakuen also has a number of songs throughout the game, each sung by a character with lyrics about their personal story. Some of the voices I did, some of them my friends did. I distinctly remember my friend Andy (who provided the voice for Tony) sending me about 20 different takes for his "grandpa voice." That was a lot of fun to sort through :)
Yes, I used RPG Maker XP in order to make this game, even though the game isn't an RPG in the traditional sense (there are no battles or leveling up). As for tips... I'd recommend starting with a project that has a smaller scope, and using a lot of placeholders in the beginning. A lot of people want to have custom graphics, music, etc. Often, these folks never finish their game because the workload is unrealistic. Start by using placeholder images, and then once you finish them game (or get a significant amount of it done), you can replace them with custom graphics. This way, you don't waste time making a bunch of sprites or music tracks if the game never gets finished (or if the project changes a lot over the course of development, which is very common).
And thank-you for pre-ordering the Rakuen soundtrack, I really hope you like it! I'm also happy that you like the PvZ and TtM soundtracks!
Best of luck with the game! Also while I'm here, love your music, keep it up :D
Aww thanks so much! As for the workload, I do most things myself (programming, audio, design, writing, a lot of the pixel characters, etc.) - however, I worked with some very talented artists - Emmy Toyonaga (the concept artist) made the character portraits you see throughout the game as well as some of the pixel characters, Matt Holmberg did some of the tilesets (like Morizora's Grove), Amy Kim Kibuishi did the Rakuen storybook art.
And of course, I have a wonderful community where we all help each other out with our projects. I want to list everyone who has been beta testing the game, or who helped me solve a technical issue when I was stuck, but it's probably best for me to save that for the credits, haha!
What motivated you to make this game?
How hard has it been to make? It seems like you are doing the vast majority of all the work.
Thank you! Keep up the awesome work :)
I think I really wanted to create something that would (hopefully) impact people in a positive way. Even though the game has sad/bittersweet moments, I'd like to think that after finishing the game, the player would walk away feeling hopeful, or maybe even inspired to be a light for someone who was going through difficult times. That's my hope anyways, hehe...
As for how hard it's been... It's definitely been one of my biggest challenges! It's taken me 4 years to complete the game, and I've really had to challenge myself by sticking to self-imposed deadlines, not getting discouraged and giving up when earlier iterations of the game weren't working (in its fledgling stage, one of my earliest testers--my mom--fell asleep during the 1st hour! it was tough feedback, but really helped me to improve the game), and just learning so many new things (I didn't intend to do so much of the pixel art myself, nor did I mean for the OST to end up being 52-tracks long). Sometimes writing dialogue and music for some of the more intensely emotional parts really drained me. But I can tell you -- I'm so so very glad to have gone through this all :)
Take a vacation, haha! Well besides that, I would really like to release another music album. I've written so many songs over the years, but never did anything with them... so it would be nice to get back to my roots again and work on that. A few of my friends are working on games that are coming out 1-2 years from now that I promised I'd create music for. I'm also helping with the writing/character design on an animation project... and probably much further down the road, I have another idea for a game (a funny one this time) :)
One of my hobbies is covering some music in 8-bit style and most of the time, I'm covering your songs/music because yours are way way AWESOME!!
I've been waiting for this game for a long time and I do have some questions. Here they come - A HUGE WAVE OF QUESTIONS IS APPROACHING!
1. I notice the soundtrack page on your bandcamp today, I like it's cute characters and the art style. Just now I had a look on it's steam page and I thought that it's somewhat similar to To the Moon. So now I'm invested. What's this game about? Is it based on To the Moon?
2. What makes you make the game?
3. You made these great music all on your own, right? How is your feeling when you become a game designer but not just a composer?
Ok that's all. I'm not an American or English, so there are probably some grammar mistakes in my questions. Sorry though :)
I've listened to the game's soundtrack on your bandcamp and I really like it. Can I get the soundtrack via steam purchase?
and I'm really excited and I anticipate a day that I can play Rakuen :)
I have a question about supporting language.
Are there plans to translate to other languages?
Thanks for reading :)
Hi Serene! Thanks so much for your nice comments! That's really cool that you are covering my music in 8-bit style! I'd love to hear some of these covers sometime! To answer your "huge wave" of questions (hehehe):
1.) Rakuen is about a hospitalized Boy who asks his Mom to escort him to the fantasy world from his favorite storybook. Throughout the game, the Boy must complete a set of challenges that revolve around helping his neighbors in the hospital (by interacting with their alter-egos in the fantasy world) in order to receive a wish from the Forest Guardian "Morizora."
The game is not based on To the Moon, however there are some similarities -- Both games are story-centric. Both have a visual style that resembles JRPGs from the SNES era (but without battles or leveling up). Rakuen's gameplay however is made up of things like room escape puzzles, a Zelda-like dungeon with an ecosystem full of strange creatures, dialogue-based mysteries, and quests where you need to do things like work undercover as a waiter in a fancy sky mansion :P
2.) I've always wanted to create a video game, ever since I was little. I think I mentioned earlier that when I was a kid I used to design Mega Man levels on paper, and write RPG stories :) I had Rakuen's story in mind for a while, and when I finally got the time and resources to be able to work on it, I took the chance!
3.) Of the 52-tracks on the Rakuen soundtrack, I composed 50 of them :) There are two guest tracks composed by my friends, and two tracks that required male vocalists (so I could not do that part)! As for becoming a game designer, I love it! It's a wonderful feeling! I had to learn so many new things (and wear so many different hats) in order to complete this project... everything from learning how to do pixel animations in Photoshop, to coding puzzles that I'd planned out on paper, to implementing dynamic audio... It's a dream come true, and I never thought I'd actually finish the game, so I'm thankful to be at this point.
Thank-you! I will have the soundtrack available on Steam as well (as an individual purchase, as well as part of a bundle with the game).
Aww thanks so much Putraman!
Thank-you! While the game is currently only in English, we would really like to translate the game to other languages eventually!
Thank-you Astra! I'm so glad that you enjoyed the game (even though Illidan isn't in it, haha)! Your feedback during all the test phases (along with all your encouragement over the years) has been so helpful!