January 11, 2008

Patapon’s director, Hiroyuki Kotani, talks about bringing the PSP title to life
By Michael Lafferty

“I wish for everyone who plays the game to gain strength to follow their goals just like how the Patapons never hesitated with their ways.”

When one first looks at Patapon, the upcoming SCEA title for the PSP, one can’t help but wonder at the simplicity of the graphical elements. But looks can be deceiving and definitely are in the case of this title.

Patapon, slated for release in late February, is a game that combines strategy, role playing, and musical elements for an addictive and entertaining gaming experience. The approach is fresh, the characters are charming, and the game is a blast to play. Of course there is challenge, and it ramps up quickly, but that is also part of the game’s charm.

The game will feature more than 30 missions and five music-based mini-games. Players will also be able to collect weapons and items to use to empower their tribe of Patapons and help them overcome adversity and reclaim their homeland.

Hiroyuki Kotani, the director/game designer of Patapon, took time to chat with GameZone about the title.

Question: The PSP has seen a wide variety of titles, but seems to really thrive with titles that are a bit out of the ordinary when it comes to gameplay mechanics or even the look of the game. If that is indeed the case, how does Patapon fit into that?

Hiroyuki: Indeed, Patapon fits very well into that particular formula. It’s a necessity to have eye-catching visuals that stand out among other countless numbers of games out there for the users to choose from. But, simply creating unique visuals does not bring about a successful game.

For Patapon, thanks to all of our staff working so hard up to the end to strive for the highest quality gameplay, music, and visuals, we think we’ve created a successful formula and an unrivaled game, not only by its originality, but as a game that everyone can enjoy.

Q: The game takes a very popular concept – musical-based games – right now and advances it with strategic, or even role-play elements (the way the tribe is customized). What was the inspiration for the melding of the concepts?

Hiroyuki: These Patapon characters, with their simple and primitive personality, led me to have an image of the beating drums, epic battles, and great expeditions. And this image became the source for creating the game system.

As far as I know, a commonly used process when creating a game is by first deciding on the game genre, then adding in the story and characters, and finally constructing the game system from the base up. But for Patapon, our goal for the final image of the game came first.

In my 18 years of creating games, it is the first time I had a clear image of an attractive game first, and then pushing my creative standards to make the game close to its image as much as this.

Q: Graphically, as sort of mentioned above, the game has a very unique look, using the designs of Rolito. What drew him to the project, or what compelled the dev team to approach him about lending his design talents to the title?

Hiroyuki: For us it was truly love at first site. (laughs).

I became familiar with Rolito’s work for the first time on his Web page. His art and character images only existed in several bits of flash content. The existence of these characters (which didn’t even have a name then), started to swell my head up with many kinds of ideas.

I started to wonder about the scenery of their mystic world, their ways of speaking, their voices, their emotions…Patapons are simple, and yet they are characters with such strong personalities.

Q: Music is a very big part of the game – and not just based in the rhythmic taping of the hotkeys. You had to develop a strong musical score that was centered on a strong beat that would be easily recognizable to Patapon’s player base. Who created the music for this title and how much original music is in the game, in terms of hours?

Hiroyuki: The creation of the music was led by the artist, KEMMEI. I’ve known him for 10 years now, which was when we created Devil Dice together, and was his debut creation. The music from LocoRoco was his creation as well.

A handsome and nice guy (laughs). And a good friend who I hang out and surf with on the weekends. Also, he is very familiar with the sounds of many different instruments, such as percussions.

While developing Patapon, which was an exceptionally tough period of game development, he joined in all of our meetings, and not only created the music, but also gave us great ideas when constructing the game system.

Patapon would not exist if it wasn’t for him.

Q: You took a concept that is, on the surface, very simple, but then you added a variety of layers to give the game a lot of depth. Was that in the original game concept, or did it grow as you began to create the world and see what was possible.

Hiroyuki: We actually started off with a very simple game system at first.

Basically, we started out with this idea of a carnival atmosphere … let’s just make everything feel festive through music. The concept grew to where we wanted to draw cheerful and delightful battles through the color of music.

From this concept came the main system of having commands using drums to create combos that can cause feverish chorus lines. We also decided to include features such as miracles, where your stance as the commander is reversed, and now you must play in accompaniment to the Patapons’ chanting chorus.

We’ve also included musical mini-games to strengthen and cultivate the Patapons, and this gave us an excuse to create even more delightfully unique characters to interact with.

Q: The game starts out rather user friendly and then ramps up the challenge quickly and still, in spite of that challenge, you manage to keep the tone light with the dialogue bubbles from your tribal members as well as the enemies. What lead to that seemingly innocuous but clever bit of design?

Hiroyuki: Patapon was designed to have two sides to make it an enjoyable game. One side is training the Patapons, and the other side is for the player, as their leader, to train and become an excellent commander. It’s fun to strengthen up the characters just like in RPGs, but I believe the true enjoyment in this game comes from the players themselves being trained.

Opening up with user-friendly early stages is only meant as a sequence to give out only the most necessary information for the player to get used to the game’s unique system, so players can stand on their own two feet as a leader. After this sequence is done though, players must become the Patapons’ only “Savior” and lead them through each mission.

Through hard work, the game was designed to show the Patapons’ silly and delightful reactions to summon up courage for the player, their leader. I hope players will eventually notice that they’ve worked hard to build up these skills to command the troops, and act as the cool, calm leader who rhythmically takes charge.

Q: What is your favorite aspect of this title?

Hiroyuki: It’s so hard to pick just one feature, but if so, it’s probably the ending.

The ending is straightforward like in fairy tales without much showiness, but yet it still touches your heart.

I wish for everyone who plays the game to gain strength to follow their goals just like how the Patapons never hesitated with their ways. Hope everyone gives their best until beating the game to watch the ending.

Q: Are there plans to evolve the game with downloadable content or even with the ability for players to trade items, or the like?

Hiroyuki: I can only say that we are thinking even beyond that. But I can’t say anything more for now. Sorry.

Q: Which elements do you consider to have been the hardest to realize within the games and which provided the biggest sense of accomplishment when they came together?

Hiroyuki: For one, it would be the Patapon and Zigaton’s dialogues that appear in between the missions. Players may not notice at first since they are too concentrated on the rhythm, but once they start to get the hang of it, I hope players will have the chance to read the dialogues.

There may be not be much time for reading at first, but as players get accustomed to the musical rhythms, they will certainly be able to look around the environment thoroughly, watch all the action, and read the dialogue. Much of the Patapon charm is reflected throughout the dialogue, which is very funny and also opens up more dramatic storytelling.

Another great feature is on how the game unfolds. This game doesn’t hold anything back. Every time a mission is completed, new exciting features are introduced, which may cause players to just skip out on their sleep so they can play more of the game to find out what’s in store for them next.

Throughout each mission, players will find that they were so deep into the game that they keep playing throughout the night until daylight!

Hope you’re able to find time to get some sleep in!

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