Okamiden will leap onto the Nintendo DS in early 2011. From now until launch we will be sharing some developer insights from the R&D team in Japan. Also we have a ton of information about the game and some cool Halloween surprises in store on the Official Okami Facebook page. Here is a developer blog from the director of Okamiden, Kuniomi Matsushita.

(Blog originally written back in June 3rd 2010)

About Kuni

Hello!  This is Matsushita, Director of Okamiden.  How are you doing?  Here the temperature has been swinging wildly from hot to cold and vice versa, but the dev team has been working in a comfortable environment, where AC is on 24/7. The only time we breathe fresh air is during our lunch time and other small breaks :p.

Today’s topic is about Kuni. The makeup of Kuni had already been created in my head since the very beginning of this Okamiden project, so Kuni has been one of the characters which I had strong feelings for all along. (Of course it counts that my first name is “Kuniomi” and that makes Kuni feel even more special to me J)

Regarding Kuni, I wanted him to:

–       Capture people’s attention

–       Be striking

–       Be sympathetic

–       Be convincing

So these are the ideas I came up with! Such as:

–       He is actually a demon…

–       He is actually a God…

 Er, those are just jokes (and I didn’t bring up these ideas back then!)  But I did propose some cool ideas, and the first idea was the best!

The very first idea always tends to be the honest, pure idea, so even though you brainstorm other ideas and options, in the end you come back to the original idea. This happens quite often with game design. After all, with the help of Mr Kitajima and the dev team, I was able to flesh out the original idea and here we have Kuni.

With the above process I was able to create Kuni and I’m glad that everybody seems to be interested in Kuni.  (Yet I don’t know whether all of you would feel convinced until you play the full game?)

Kuni is the very first partner that Chibi meets, and plays a very important part in the story, so I still have lots and lots of things that I’d like to tell you!  But I don’t want to give it all away… if I do tell you too much, I might get dunked into Nanko-bay here in Osaka by Eshiro-san.

If we are able to release the game without having Eshiro sink me, I’d be pleased to tell you things that couldn’t be told in the game.

P.S. The image below is drawn by Mr. Endo, the Lead Designer of our team who drew this while we were discussing. It turned out pretty good in a short amount of time, so I thought I’d post this with my blog.