To Clarify the Core of Gameplay

Think about the Bosses

I joined Nintendo as a programmer; I was assigned to the "Splatoon 2" development team after employee training. At that point, the base part of the game was already complete, so because I wanted to make new gameplay, I was able to make a prototype immediately to a state where it could be verified. While I was sharing ideas with two of the senior game designers, I decided to start working on creating enemy characters that appear in the game.

In "Splatoon 2", in addition to the main 4 vs. 4 battle modes, there is a hero mode that supports solo play. When the work of creating the enemies was near completion, for hero mode, I was told "feel free to think alone", and they allowed me to create one of the five bosses. I thought that it was a great opportunity, and I continued to think about the boss while raising the tension to the maximum.

But, it was still my first year at the company, so naturally, the idea I thought couldn't have been accepted very easily. At the beginning, we think about settings that wouldn't be possible in this game, like if I don't give a long explanation, we wouldn't be able to convey the fun, so I was thinking of a very confusing mechanism.

Actively Participating in Creating Ideas

To summarize, my head was filled with ideas. But, whenever I came up with an idea for a boss, it was always shot down. Therefore, I remembered something I learned from my time as an intern at Nintendo: "clarify the core of gameplay". So that theory, I decided to organize my ideas according to the concept of "what would you want to battle? What would be fun?" So, as a result, I came up with the idea of "[The Octo Shower] loses support [from the Octocopters], and because it's heavy, it falls."

And thus, the "Octo Shower" was born. First, I drew a rough sketch, and then I had the artist finish it with storyboards and graphics. Then, I programmed and battled it myself. However, making complicated movements, because I was an amateur programmer at the time, I had to complete with help from a programmer with more experience.

Generally, programmers work with ideas after the planners and artists have come up with them, which is the idea of the order of operations that many people have. But Nintendo is a bit different. There are many planners on the team who started as programmers. Instead of waiting for a project to come out, there is an opportunity to actively participate in creating ideas. As a result, I feel that it is a pleasure to work at Nintendo and like I really belong here.

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