Taro Omiya

Taro Omiya

Software Engineer, Game Designer

  • #WeeklyGameMusic: Title Theme (Orchestral Arrangement) (Ib)

    —

    by

    Taro Omiya
    in

    #WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

    Welp, I’m in the mood for a RPGMaker horror game.  Here’s a pretty darn good one, with a simple but moving narrative, forgiving horror mechanic, and very likable characters.  KaRASU’s rearrangement of kouri’s Title Theme does a great justice to Ib‘s use of juvenile perspective to increase its creepiness factor.  Welcome to Ib‘s mystical art gallery, where the lead character’s 9-year-old innocence can’t save the gallery’s dark influence on her sanity.

    Ib is a 9-year-old girl walking around curiously through the legendary Weise Guertena’s art gallery with her parents until she comes upon one large, very immersive painting.  It’s at this moment that the lights turns off, all visitors (including Ib’s parents) disappears, mysterious writings starts appearing on the walls, and the paintings starts to animate and even make creepy sounds.  Amidst the horror and confusion from all the commotions, Ib finds herself staring at a floor installation depicting the ocean that’s begging her to jump in.  And so she does, into the prideful, distrusting, and envious world of Guertena’s finest works.

    Ib is a story-driven RPGMaker horror game that is thankfully tame on both story and horror.  This surprisingly well-balanced adventure involves avoiding enemies while solving very clever puzzles, and learning more about each character that joins your party.  While the game is very forgiving, with a unique 5-hit-point health meter depicted by an image of a rose, the method of recovering health is very limited.

    Ib is available on the PC for free.  An English translation of this Japanese game can be found here: http://vgperson.com/games/ib.htm

    Read more: #WeeklyGameMusic: Title Theme (Orchestral Arrangement) (Ib)

  • #WeeklyGameMusic: Fungi Forest (Donkey Kong 64)

    —

    by

    Taro Omiya
    in

    #WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

    http://youtu.be/PCT4tf_E-C4

    Do you hear that?  Yup, I’m late again.  Anyway, this week’s music is a nice and pleasant composition from Donkey Kong 64, written by the infamous Grant Kirkhope.  While Grant is more known for his jaunty, bouncy compositions, Fungi Forest is a tame music more focused on silence.  A soothing music fitting to a large and epic forest.

    Donkey Kong 64.  Well, that’s another game that needs almost no introduction.  Basically, King K. Rool kidnaps Donkey Kong’s 4 friends and their golden bananas, so it’s up to the lazy Kong himself to save the day.  Ah, those were the good times.  Anyways, Donkey Kong 64 is a 3D platformer that’s known to be one of the worst offenders of its genre, collecta-thon.  From the hard-to-find golden bananas to the color-coded bananas that only a specific Kong can collect, it’s only natural that many people criticized the sheer amount of plot coupons they needed to collect to progress through the game.  Still, most critics agree that it is a solid platformer that has tight controls, fascinating worlds to travel through, and a good fun to be had.

    Donkey Kong 64 was originally made for, you guessed it, Nintendo 64.  It is available on the WiiWare as a downloadable retro game.

    Read more: #WeeklyGameMusic: Fungi Forest (Donkey Kong 64)

  • Chrono Trigger first impression

    —

    by

    Taro Omiya
    in

    So now that I’ve played several hours on Chrono Trigger, I think it’s about time I write down my first impressions of the game.  They say the first few minutes is the most important part of the game, but I’ve always preferred a great journey over a five minute spectacle.  Anyways, I figured it’d be interesting to jot down some notes now, and see if my opinion on the game changes as I get closer to the ending.  Call it the indie developer’s notes on retro games he/she has not played before.

    Background

    While I like JRPGs, my taste lean towards action-RPGs than turn-based or strategy.  Games like Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door or Xenoblade Chronicles — both of which are my favorite JRPGs — are much more my jam than, say, Earthbound and Golden Sun.  Additionally, while I have dabbled in gaming in NES and SNES days, the first console I’ve owned, and the one I remember the most is the Nintendo 64, so I tend to prefer playing 3D games over 2D ones.  Naturally, this colors my opinion on retro games that I haven’t played before.

    Additionally, I’ve been constantly informed by friends both online and offline how much I should play Chrono Trigger (and Final Fantasy VII, but Chrono Trigger takes priority), so needless to say, I was a bit concerned that this game was too hyped when I started playing.  Additionally, I kind of like spoilers, so here’s what I already know about the story:

    1. Crono, the lead character, dies at some point.  He hasn’t died yet in my playthrough, but I did get to a point where the prophecy is thrown at the party, so I suspect it’s coming soon.
    2. Lavos is the bad guy the party members find out exists at the very far future.  Or maybe Lavos is a thing.  Actually, I don’t know what it is.  Giygas?
    3. Frog is a formerly human prince…of something.
    4. There’s time travel!
    5. There’s significant decisions that affects both the story and game settings, often reflected in the future.

    Lastly, I’ve decided to rename characters based off of other video games, and will be referencing them to my custom names (just to confuse you):

    • Crono as Link
    • Lucca as Samus
    • Marle as Jade
    • Frog as Slip
    • Robo as Ness
    • Ayla as Croft

    The Parts I Like

    The story-changing decisions are subtle.

    I was initially unsure whether I liked how subtle the story-changing decisions were, especially when playing games like Tales of Symphonia and Golden Sun trained me to make multiple saves when I noticed a conversation was making me side with one sanction or another.  I’ve come to appreciate this, though, as I go along.  It makes the journey feel a lot more organic as I go through them.

    So how does Chrono Trigger implement story-changing decisions?  The part that sticks out to me most is when Link is thrown into jail.  You have a choice to either backstab one of the guards, or simply wait out until Samus saves him.  The backstabbing option is not obvious: it takes several steps to make that option available, and I had to scamper around the cell multiple time to figure out how to get there.  Aaaand I actually restarted after that because I prefer to approach the problem more peacefully (and expect a Game Over screen).  Anyway, the important part is that Chrono Trigger tends to hide some details that you have to figure out yourself, and this serves to be a great advantage from the decision standpoint.

    Clear personalities.

    Outside of Link, all the characters have very clear personalities.  We have Samus as a smart bookworm; Jade as a tomboy princess; Slip as a loyal swordsman; Ness as a naive robot; and Croft as a blunt barbarian.  I find these comical caricatures to be quick to understand and easily relatable.  Seeing them respond differently in various points of the story creates a very interesting narrative dynamic.  It’s very fascinating to see one character respond in awe to a destructive weapon, while another question whether one should be forged from the first place.

    Combo tech attacks encourages different party combinations.

    It took me a while to get used to how combo techs would use up turns from two or more party members for a single devastating attack, but other than that, I’ve come to like it.  Basically, unlocking combo tech attacks requires not only for your party members to learn normal tech moves, but also be in a battle at the same time.  Considering how your characters don’t gain experience points unless they’re in battle, cycling through your characters turns out to be an important strategy to make sure your party members remain balanced.  I like that from a simple game mechanic, you’re actively made aware of this important detail, and have to plan accordingly.

    Some introduction to different eras are magical.

    To me, there were two moments that was really striking: first time being introduced to the very far future, and first time entering the magic palace.  Considering how drastically different these two environments look like, they both took me by surprise, and I couldn’t help but explore every nook and crannies in each of them.

    The Parts I Don’t Like

    Over-reliance on the overworld.

    The world in Chrono Trigger honestly feels vast and…boring.  I feel that to create a sense of epicness in the lands Link and his party travels, the game relies too much on overworlds, and since there’s no random encounters in this game (thank goodness), this part feels very boring.  Don’t get me wrong: I know there’s going to be an item that’ll help shorten my travels, as it’s already hinted with the flying dinosaurs, but I’m already tired of the worlds I’ve visited in.

    There’s also the fact that any non-overworld portions of the game feels utterly inconsistent.  Some normal-world levels are only one screen large, while others are a full dungeon.  Seeing as both of these levels are divided by an overworld, it’s hard to predict where you’re entering will be large or small.  This makes it hard for me to judge when I should and shouldn’t save.

    Sudden and unavoidable battles.

    You know, for a game that prizes how there are no random encounters, I’m often annoyed at how many of those encounters are unavoidable, and come at you without warning.  Most modern RPGs are much more fairer by making it clear that if you talk to an enemy, they’ll give you a choice whether you want to fight it or not.  Chrono Trigger, however, has moments where you’ll be running into a required door, only to be pushed out and swarmed by enemies.  That just feels unfair.

    That’s not to mention how difficult it is to judge the trigger box for avoidable battles.  Sometimes, I don’t even touch an enemy, and yet the battle starts anyway.  That’s bad UI, in my opinion.

    No run option.

    You can’t escape from battles.  It makes the last problem even worse.

    Selecting attack/item options cover your stats (like HP, MP, etc.)

    In an attempt to not obscure the view, the attack/item selection menu during battle uses as much menu space as possible.  This means that menus will cover your party’s HP/MP bar, making it difficult to judge when my characters are about to die.

    Outdated battle system.

    I wasn’t fond of Chrono Trigger‘s early Final Fantasy-like battle system, and it only barely grown on me as time went along.  Technically, there’s an option to make the battle system fully turn-based, but I didn’t find this to be much of an improvement, either.  The only mechanic I think is clever about it is when combo-tech attacks are being selected.

    It’s kind of hard.

    OK, I should be expecting this from a retro game, especially considering how I played through Earthbound 0 before, but Chrono Trigger is old-school hard JRPG.

    Most puzzles are fetch quests.

    Fetch quests.  My biggest pet-peeve in video games.  Chrono Trigger is filled with them.  See, I really like Golden Sun for its inventive and difficult puzzles, and I can tolerate Earthbound for its humor, but Chrono Trigger has neither of these advantages, and it really irritates me.  When stuff like this are passed as “puzzles,” naturally it’ll ruffle my feathers the wrong way.

    No synopsis.

    I’m playing Chrono Trigger on and off, and I often lose track of where I was at, or skipped an important detail.  The fact that there isn’t some notes indicating where the story is going, besides maybe the name of the save file, makes it hard to get back to the game, sometimes.

    Link is a forgettable mute protagonist.

    It’s possible to give personality to mute protagonists.  Earthbound and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker are two shining examples of this.  There’s a very real sense of character development and progression from both of these games simply from character interactions or observations that slowly changes towards the positive.  Chrono Trigger, however, doesn’t have moment like these, so I’m having a hard time judging what kind of person Link is like, other than that he has impressive sword skills.  It makes it hard to support the hero when they’re basically an uninteresting blank slate.

    In Conclusion

    I’m afraid Chrono Trigger was over-hyped for me, since the flaws in the game are very obvious.  Hopefully my opinion will change as I go along, but some of these flaws are leaving a very bad taste in my mouth.

    Read more: Chrono Trigger first impression

  • #WeeklyGameMusic: Forest (iBlast Moki 2)

    —

    by

    Taro Omiya
    in

    #WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

    Good ol’ Romain “Ninomojo” Gauthier has yet another beautiful mobile game music, this time for an adorable puzzle game called iBlast Moki 2. As the score’s title implies, Forest depicts a tone fitting of…well, actually, anything that’s happy. Anyway, brew that hot cocoa of yours, sit back in that comfy couch, and listen to this wonderful track for that Christmas holiday mood.

    iBlast Moki 2 is a quirky (and an early) mobile puzzle game that involves primarily placing bombs to launch the adorable Mokis –don’t worry, no blood or gore in this game — into the warp gate. While timed bombs will be your primary tool, with the time it takes to blast the bombs being fully controllable, a variety of other tools — including ropes, paint bombs, and ships — will assist Mokis’ travels. And that’s not to mention a level editor that exists in-game, making the possibilities endless!

    iBlast Moki 2 is available for download on iPhone, iPads, and most Android devices.

    Read more: #WeeklyGameMusic: Forest (iBlast Moki 2)

  • Predicting the future (because I’m, bored)

    —

    by

    Taro Omiya
    in

    When you’re devoting much of your time on stuff like independent game development, it’s very easy to have a myopic view of the world. So to relax a bit from being an insignificant indie gamedev, I’m going to try thinking of something else besides video games. By predicting the future…very poorly and insignificantly.

    Niches will be more important, while general public will become a less viable market.

    There’s two reasons I suspect niches will become more important: first the recent successful startups in practically every field I know of have been capitalizing on smaller, more devoted niches. Second, I’m seeing that the advent of internet and smartphones has caused a lot of younger people to favor exceptionalism somewhat more than their originating country’s culture. I suspect the newer generation prefers working with tools and comfort that feels like it was made for them than what’s popular. This will inevitably chew away “general public” as a market, forcing a lot of bigger companies to create different variations of the same thing to cater each niche.

    In other words, the next generation market will heavily depend on style and identity. The shift to this personalization age will be a slow one, however, since the only way a startup can grow from their niche is to aim towards general public. Personally, I suspect (and hope) that the market will slowly fragment, causing “the general public” to shrink.  Until, that is….

    Everything will be automated.  Yes, even art.

    It’s a historical constant that making any job easier for the general household stays and improves lives.  So when the next set of automation, either with cooking, sanitation, material collection, etc. rolls, you bet that’s going to remain for a long, long time.  Going along the same line of thinking as the last segment, automation will first aim towards niches, then push themselves into the general public with customization options.  Should they succeed hitting the general public, these companies will be able to hit a wide range of niches merely by adding more customization options, making their product personalizable for nearly everyone.

    Not only will this inflate the size of “the general public” again, it will actually make competition less viable.  In fact, at the point automation becomes a real thing, I suspect monopolies will rule the market (at least, in the Windows vs Mac level of “monopoly”), and formations of new companies, including art studios, stagnate.

    At least in the US, defense and law enforcement spendings will decrease, and public service will increase. This will be true for most first world countries as well.

    Simply put, war and violence are at an all-time low, and will continue to decrease for nearly every country.  Technically, I suspect there will be a bottom to that curve, but I don’t see that happening specifically on a global scale for quite a while.  Anyway, things like defense and law enforcement (police, for example) spendings will have to decrease as they become less and less necessary.  People are becoming more capable of policing themselves, making the enforcements more outdated.

    Instead, spendings on public services will increase.  We’re already seeing this: countries like Japan are aging, and the need to support older people are causing them to go heavily in-debt.  Practically all first-world countries are facing this problem in varying degrees, even here in the US.  We’re living longer, and will need to support the growing, older population, and since increasing that age limit for retirement isn’t going to happen any time soon, the spendings will have to increase.

    This results in some significant shifts in the market.  For one, older generations are now going to be a new niche market, and a healthy one to boot.  Second, government as a customer will be less reliant on “brunt force”-based defense, instead focusing more on cyber defense and spying.  This shift in technology also means that airplanes, tanks, and battleship engineering will be fazed out towards maintenance while UAVs and snooping will become more important.

    There will be a series of major technological breakthrough in combating global warming.

    Disregarding the debate on whether global warming exists or not, lots of efforts has been placed in combating global warming.  I think it’s inevitable that a new series of breakthroughs will occur, allowing companies to adopt cheaper protocols that still manages to be environmentally more safe.  This includes emitting less toxins and carbon dioxides, as well as using less rare-earth materials.

    The unfortunate thing is that it’s going to take the less fortunate countries a little longer to adapt to these technologies.  This is partially due to politics, as these countries that rely on mining rare-earth materials a lot will now have to sustain that market artificially.  However, most of it will be due to simple human stubbornness.

    Alright, all of these predictions were safe so far.  Let’s try something else.

    The numbers of countries will increase until your backyard is your own country.

    Taking the personalization part to the extreme, I expect the number of countries to increase, especially after the automation phases.  Basically, by the time everything becomes automated, most upper-class households will be capable of holding on its own without relying on imports.  It would, at this point, make sense that they attempt to customize the government to their preference.  I think somebody will eventually figure out how to efficiently create their own country, and everyone will follow suit.

    So what does this mean for the United Nations?

    UN will die, and be replaced by the internet.

    Or something like that.  When I say “UN will die,” I mean that they will lose relevance.  Really, I’m not sure what will replace the UN, but my hunch says it’s the internet.  Because that makes sense.

    Currency will cease to exist.  Trade will be more personal.

    Obviously if your country is the size of your backyard, it’s going to be pretty pointless to have money.  I suspect trade itself won’t die, though.  Instead, it’ll be more personal, with less middlemen to worry about.

    The world is shifting towards introverts.  Social will become more physically separated.

    I suspect extroversion will be less appealing as a personality trait, as newer technologies that augment communication favor those introverted.  In a lot of ways, both the general population and the popular media will become a lot quieter and will rely on more complicated connections with their audience.

    Alright, that’s enough venting boredom for now.  Back to work!

    Read more: Predicting the future (because I’m, bored)

  • #WeeklyGameMusic: Sync (Fez)

    —

    by

    Taro Omiya
    in

    #WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

    Do you feel the beat? Yes, that one. Careful, don’t skip that one. You don’t want to fall off of those disappearing platforms! Great, now keep the rhythm. Now we’re all in Sync, a piece by Disasterpeace from the mind-bending game, Fez.

    Fez is a fairly simple puzzle-platformer with a simple story. Gomez, the lead character, lives a rather sheltered but still peaceful village whose knowledge and experience ends in 2D. Yet as a chosen one, Gomez obtains a magical fez from the village elder that allows him to travel in semi-3D. Abusing this power, however, causes the one thing that keeps the world together to break apart, and defrag across different worlds. It also crashes the game. Stuck in a progressively degrading world, it’s up to Gomez to fix his mistake.

    The gameplay of Fez, as mentioned earlier, is about traveling in a bizarrely 3D way. More accurately, the fez allows Gomez to rotate the world on its vertical axis by 90 degrees. But since Gomez operates in 2D physics, the depth of the level collapses after every rotation, allowing him to make platforms align properly. While most puzzles rely on understanding how this physics system works, another set of puzzles rely on deciphering codes. When one finds a Fez code, they can input the button combination the code represents, unlocking some fun collectables. Overall, it’s a delightfully colorful platformer that isn’t very punishing, but has some nasty difficult codes to decipher.

    Fez was originally released for Xbox 360 as a downloadable. It is now available for Playstation 3 & 4, and on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

    Read more: #WeeklyGameMusic: Sync (Fez)