With Apple Arcade, you reach a lot of players who may never have heard of PG. As a result, I feel we were able to create a game with PlatinumGames’ fun and stylish action, but not without first overcoming a number of new and unforeseen issues. It took quite a bit of time to devise UI that would keep things simple while supporting World of Demons’ unique summoning system and a variety of attack variations. When you think of your average action game controls, there are about 10 buttons to use but if you try to have that many on a smartphone game, the screen gets overrun. (Sakabe) It was already touched on, but touch controls presented a variety of problems.
Camera controls especially required a lot of trial and error to get right. (Tanaka) Supporting both touch controls and controllers was a big challenge and balancing the game to make sure both methods felt good was difficult. The game’s concept focused on action right from the start, and the hard work of the dev team was what made achieving that possible. (Inaba) World of Demons is in fact PlatinumGames’ first title released on mobile platforms. Was it a big change to develop for mobile devices? Will fans get the typical PlatinumGames action with World of Demons, despite the new platform? Mobile games, on the other hand, tend not to be known for being particularly action-rich. PlatinumGames is known for developing fast-paced action games. Unless I’ve missed something, this game is your first mobile game. That initial test release was for a different platform, and the current incarnation of World of Demons is almost completely different as well. However, sometime later we had a chance to adapt World of Demons for the Apple Arcade platform. (Inaba) It’s true that World of Demons had been in development for some time, and had undergone a test release, but circumstances prevented a proper release.
Can you tell us what happened at that time? I already knew it had been announced, but not that it was available regionally for a short time. To be honest, while doing research for the interview, I found out that World of Demons had already been released in some countries in 2018, but was removed from the store. We focused on what we thought would be good, rather than trying to match some perception of what might go over better outside of Japan.
With Japanese culture having become more well known and loved worldwide, we felt our ability to depict traditional Japanese motifs like yokai and samurai would be a strength, and make World of Demons stand out with a flair that’s different from more western style monsters or sci-fi creatures. (Tanaka) At PlatinumGames, we continue to strive for distinct visual style with all of our games, including World of Demons. Given the setting and the backstory, was it a logical choice to go for this style? Did you discuss how this particular, regional style would be received in the West? The game is based on a really impressive style called ukiyo-e. (Tanaka) We want players all over the world to experience and enjoy the wonder and allure of the Japanese culture that we’ve grown up with through the games that we make, and that as a Japanese studio making games based on Japanese culture is a meaningful part of what we can do. But if you’ve never heard of these creatures and stories, you can still play it, right? In my opinion, then you should do it all the more. The game is extensively based on Japanese folklore. In World of Demons we meet Oni, we are assisted by Yokai and of course we are a samurai. But we also digress a little, talking about the partnership with Tencent and Project G.G., the first in-house game from PlatinumGames. We’re talking about the unique World of Demons, the 2018 game’s short-term availability, the style of the game, and the collaboration with Apple Arcade.
For a few days now, PlatinumGames‘ World of Demons has been available exclusively at Apple Arcade.