AX’11: “Shira Oka” Panel



by Jason Young, staff editor, Inside AX- Anime Expo

shira-oka

For anyone who may have missed American bishoujo game developer Okashi Studios‘ panel from Day 3 of Anime Expo 2011, here is a short synopsis of what they discussed:

  • The crowd seemed mixed of new and old fans, which Okashi Studios was hoping for more of the new than old.
  • While the group was at the E3 Expo last month, most people thought that the game was localized from Japan giving fans an idea of the high quality production values that they can expect from Shira Oka.
  • There is currently a thread on GameFAQs now, and the team has already received good feedback.
  • For anyone unfamiliar to the title, it is similar to the film Groundhog’s Day where the protagonist is reliving his childhood over and over again until he finds a way to stop it.
  • The team describes the game as more of an RPG than traditional dating sim.
  • Although the game is hard, there is an ‘easy mode’ for players who may find the game’s stat-balancing system to be too difficult to manage at times. A substantial improvement over the game’s initial release.
  • You can initiate activities to spend time with people, have scripted activities, random activities and special events.
  • All of the characters were added to the game by people who worked on the game.
  • There are currently no plans for expansion packs or the like, but the team will fix game bugs soon in hopes of letting it run on any computer.
  • Okashi Studios has become a Judobaby affiliate, which the team hopes will help them get the title into brick and motor stores such GameStop, EB Games, Fry’s, Best Buy, etc.
  • The group has tried to get onto Steam, but nothing as of late.
  • The game can currently be purchased on GamersGate, Impulse and the Mac App Store.
  • Inspiration for the title included classic harem anime such as Love Hina, FLCL and Azumanga Daioh.
  • They are still getting ideas for further game development.
  • Although completion of the game’s endings in order is irrelevant, the dialogue choices are dependent on the endings.
  • Masashiro from Zero Zeigen, Japanese doujin game maker of visual novel/dating sim was brought over as a special guest. Their new game, Koenchu, is being localized for the US and other territories for Windows-based systems. More details can be found on Zero Zeigen’s homepage here: http://www.zerozigen.us/product.html
  • Many other companies are now making visual novels or at least starting to integrate visual novel-type gameplay into their games. A few examples that I can personally think off-hand is Atlus with the Persona series and even BioWare with Mass Effect 2‘s “interactive” comic book system.
------

Tags: , ,