[Ed. note: Read along from top-right to lower-left!]

※ At the morning meeting…
※ Say, everyone, what do you all do to stay motivated?

※ Drink sake after work!
※ Don’t isolate yourself?
※ Do your best at the thing you’re great at!
※ Talk yourself up!

※ Should we even be relying this much on “motivation” to begin with?
※ Just keep working steadily, day in and day out.
Is that really not enough?

※ Whaa~

※ [First-Time Morning Meeting Participant, Sound Effect Supervisor, Sugiyama-san]
Just find the thing no one else is doing and do that!
Right?

※ Great one!

[This diary entry was first published in our free newsletter, The Secret Onion Cellar. Want to receive development diaries just like this, along with the latest news and behind-the-scenes information on everything happening here at Onion Games? Click here to subscribe, and you’ll also get a FREE MINI GAME, music samplers, downloadable art & more!]

[Ed. note: Read along from top-right to lower-left!]

※ One day, a certain Uncle asks his friends a question…

※ Hey, Mr. Icchi! Do you have any secret tricks for making games?
※ Why are you asking me? I should be asking you!

※ Stay on top of deadlines! Make time for meetings!
※ Give up on the things you want… maybe..
※ Always keep focusing on the fun!
※ Properly apply everything you’ve learned!

※ Tsk, tsk, tsk…

※ [Ryo-sama, Technical Artist] Build a debug mode that’s easy to use.. Right?
※ Nice one!

[This diary entry was first published in our free newsletter, The Secret Onion Cellar. Want to receive development diaries just like this, along with the latest news and behind-the-scenes information on everything happening here at Onion Games? Click here to subscribe, and you’ll also get a FREE MINI GAME, music samplers, downloadable art & more!]

[Ed. note: Read along from top-right to lower-left!]

※ 6PM. Dusk. The witching hour for indie-game-making uncles…

※ Agh! My eyes are so blurry I can’t even read the screen!

※ Ahh! My foot! Why is it cramping up now?!

※ These fingers! They’re cramping up and I keep making typos!

※ What?! I swear I did this already… but it’s not done!

※ My back is killing me!

※ I can’t hold it any more…

※ [Ryo-sama, Technical (Draconian) Artist]

Oh my god, both of you!! I don’t care!! You have to learn Unity!

※ Okkkkk~

[This diary entry was first published in our free newsletter, The Secret Onion Cellar. Want to receive development diaries just like this, along with the latest news and behind-the-scenes information on everything happening here at Onion Games? Click here to subscribe, and you’ll also get a FREE MINI GAME, music samplers, downloadable art & more!]

Hello everyone.
This is Kimura-san, your indie-videogame-making Uncle.
As you know, I’m currently hard at work developing a new RPG.
As usual, I’ve been very busy.

Today, I’d like to talk about “games, robots, and love”.

At some point in the future, a bipedal humanoid robot and an AI will merge…

Will there be a future where robots who move by their own will, like Osamu Tezuka’s “Astro Boy”, make games together?

Recently, as I chatted with the popular ChatGPT, I was struck by how naturally the conversation flowed.
It seemed to raise the question of what a human being even is.
If humanoid robots as kind-hearted as Astro Boy appeared in the real world and started making videogames, I might start feel many different things.

“Robots are cooler than us!”

“What’s the point of being human?”

Things like that.

(more…)

[Ed. note: Read along from top-right to lower-left!]

※ This is bad! We’re running out of time!

※ There’s too much to fix…

※ What the—?! We have to submit by 4pm? Uhhhh…..

※ Are we taking care of this and that!

※ I’m exhausted.

※

※ zzz

※ Something else just came up!

※ Wha—just fix it when you can fix it!

※ [slams out a hail-mary type move]

※ [incoherent screaming]

※ Hang in there, everyonion~

[This diary entry was first published in our free newsletter, The Secret Onion Cellar. Want to receive development diaries just like this, along with the latest news and behind-the-scenes information on everything happening here at Onion Games? Click here to subscribe, and you’ll also get a FREE MINI GAME, music samplers, downloadable art & more!]

Hello everyone.

This is Kimura-san, your indie-videogame-making Uncle.
As you know, I’m currently hard at work developing a new RPG.
Today, I want to talk about “secret bases”.

(more…)

Hello everyone.

This is Kimura-san, your indie-videogame-making Uncle.
As you know, I’m currently hard at work developing a new RPG.
Today, I want to talk about this “Rose-Tinted World”.

It seems that number of Japanese developers making indie games is going up dramatically. And now, last month saw the debut of a TV drama called “Atom’s Last Shot“, about a solo, auteur, indie game making genius.

What an amazing time we live in!
I can’t believe there’s a TV show like this in Japan!
…But it’s kind of weird. It’s honestly not super interesting.
Maybe because there is no “drudgery” in it?

In the real world of indie games, there are many more frustrated developers than successful ones. What you thought was going to be a bright, rose-tinted future turns out to actually be stained red with blood!

In reality, the world of indie games is more about getting tossed into a muddy, bloody battlefield.

(more…)

Hello everyone.

This is Kimura-san, your indie-videogame-making Uncle.
As you know, I’m currently hard at work developing a new RPG.

Today, I’d like to talk about “cows”.

In this world, there are very talented “professionals”,
who can create exactly what they’ve been assigned.

Sadly, I am not such a game developer.

For example, if someone asked me to make X,
I probably couldn’t do it.

In that sense, I am not a “professional”.
Well, then, what am I?
In short, I am a “cow”.

One day, in the Swiss countryside,
I was on a farm, watching cows.

You’d see these cows, they’d eat some grass,
and then they’d move to a tree to lick something.

As it turns out, there was a “salt lick” suspended from a tree branch…

They’d eat grass, and then they’d lick the salt.
Eat grass, lick salt, eat grass, lick salt…
Back and forth, endlessly.

(more…)

Hello everyone.

This is Kimura-san, your indie-videogame-making Uncle.
As you know, I’m currently hard at work developing a new RPG.

Today, I’d like to talk about “seriousness and unseriousness”.

Game development is something like a “locomotive of seriousness”.

Developing RPGs, especially, is a long-distance train, like the Trans-Siberian Railway.

We are a very small development team… but, day in and day out, we work very seriously to keep the coal burning, in the locomotive that is game development.

Shoveling in programming, drawings, music, and everything else… all of these things become heat energy, which keeps the locomotive moving.

Put another way, we are a busy, steady locomotive that chugs along, puffing out smoke.

But what exactly is the “game itself” that such a serious locomotive produces?

(more…)

Hello everyone.

This is Kimura-san, your indie-videogame-making Uncle.
As you know, I’m currently hard at work developing a new RPG.

Today, I’d like to talk about the urge to “escape” I sometimes feel.
I’ll be totally honest and confess:
I am not a very good game developer.

I say that because I often feel like escaping from game development entirely.

I’ll get stuck on an idea.
I’ll feel stuck as the head of my studio.

Whenever this happens, I want to escape.

(more…)