Recently I found a new fan-made videogame for Shaman King is being developed by KayCornea over at ModDB called Shaman King: Osorezan Revoir. It will be an adventure game using the Unreal Development Kit for PC. The game will adapt the Osorezan Revoir manga arc. On ModDB you can follow the status and updates for the game, along with Livestreams of development process.
Additionally, he’s looking for some additional support for developing the game. The 3 roles he is currently looking for are Audio Developer, Coding Consultant, Voice Actors. For the voice acting, all roles are still open! If you ever wanted to voice Yoh’s character, now is the chance! So if you are interested in the project, be sure to head over to the website and apply! I also added a poll on the left for which roles you would want to voice.
As a Patch-Cafe exclusive, I had a quick interview with KayCornea to get the inside scoop on this upcoming game. All images are from the development of the videogame. Click the Read the rest of this entry button to learn more!
How were you first introduced in Shaman King?
Well it isn’t that special. My younger cousin (interested in animes) was bragging very much about it, and after I accidentally saw an advertising playing on TV, about Shaman King Collectibles which come with some sort of a desert, I became more interested in this anime and found the episodes on the net.
Favorite Hiroyuki Takei character (or pair)?
It’d be a bit hard to chose one knowing that they usually work as a team completing one another. Yet guess it would be Yoh, his attitude about everything and the ways he finds to get himself out of any problems are quite admirable.
Favorite episode/chapter/story arc for a Hiroyuki Takei series?
Mappa Douji, the chapters in Hell, the chapters in which the team faces the guardians(to reach Hao) and, eventually, Osorezan Revoir.
What type of game is Osorezan Revoir? (platformer, FPS, .etc)
Genre: Adventure. Roaming around with the sight form the third person view (always like’d free/sandbox with some spice of action type of games)
Why the Osorezan Revoir arc?
Well couple of reasons:
– Impressing story embeding both romance and action
– Not too big in volume (not too long)
– Well and cause i saw the legendary Nekomata in it (up until the moment,seen him only in Shaman King 2: Master of Spirits – gba game, where I’ve seen the Fumon Goreku technique)
How much liberty are you planning on taking with the material from the original manga? Expanding on the storyline?
Exactly the opposite, I really don’t like seeing in games ‘fillers.’ Any sort of distortions for the original story are unacceptable (I know it cause i’m crafting stories myself, and wouldn’t like those to be altered for any reasons). I know it wouldn’t be possible to keep myself straight to it, although i’ll try my best to remain as close as possible to the original.
As contradictory to my own words as it may seem i’ll add the ‘in between’ for the story, and special mode for the sake of the game itself, once again cause I like free roaming, exploring and logical play.
For the voice-overs, are you looking for the characters to mirror the English dub, the Japanese, or another language? Or are you aiming for something unique?
Yes about this feature, I just don’t want to make the game seem incomplete, so I’d add the voices for the chars if possible instead of bubbles or subs.
I’ve found the Drama CD on the net (with the Japanese voices), yet it doesn’t cover the whole story,and,to tell the truth, I didn’t quite seem to like Yoh’s voice and Matamune’s, they seem too different from the ones which I’ve heard in my head while reading the manga.
This is why I would want to have analogical voices to the English version, maybe it’s cause I’m more used to it (as with Dragon Ball Z with Goku, huge difference between English and Japanese voice tonalities)
How long have you been in development for this project?
I began to work on this project from around April 2012.
You are looking for some background music to supplement the game. Are you aiming to mirror the original Japanese anime soundtrack or the Drama CDs?
Good question. Don’t know how will the crowds react (nor the manga’s creator, if he ever see’s this game) but the music I’m aiming to implement was never heard in Shaman King series. Basically the reason for this decision is cause I think this tracks fit better the overall atmospherics of the samurai – shaman – fighting theme. And, again being a bit selfish, cause I’ve read almost the whole Manga with these tracks playing in the background.
Have you used other Shaman King videogames as reference? You’ve mentioned Master of Spirits 2, but have you looked at Shaman King: Soul Fight (Japanese Gamecube) or Shaman King: Funbari Spirits (Japanese PS2)
Yes,indeed I’ve played both of them and the Power of Spirits (PS2), although I’ve passed only the Master of Spirits,and I’ve been mostly inspired by this game and it’s diversity of abilities.Other games seem to be missing the freedom of choosing your path,as well as abilities list.
Apart from it, can’t say that I’ve used any of them as a reference, I’m modelling in my own style, and the animations are far from the ones shown in those games, basically cause it’s a different timeline, and cause I ain’t that good at it.
Will you be using information or “unseen plot” from the “Shaman Files” from the Shaman King Kang Zeng Bang editions?
Guess not. I’ll leave this to modders. After the game would be released it’ll be free for modding, so you can add, edit and make it better. To tell the truth I might help a bit if a certain team will decide to make a shaman king game,hopefully bigger then mine.
As an adventure style game, have you started work on the “gameplay aspects” of the game? Often there is a fighting aspect to the game. Can you expand on that?
Emm, unexpected question. All i can say is that it’s in progress (currently in awaiting for me to finish the models and animes).Yet I can say that basics are about as working (walk, run jump, idles), as for the combat I’d need enemies which currently are being developed so didn’t gotten to that aspect.
A majority of the people who will be playing your game, will have read the manga. How will this effect how you build the game for the user?
For the ones who had already read – a free-roaming Shaman King game is about as far as a ‘Dream’, fans will mostly enjoy to see Shimokita and Osorezan (the plot’s most special spots), and maybe taking a bath in Kino’s ‘Onsen’
As for the rest, it’ll hopefully have an analogical effect as reading the manga, plus being able to asses the characters emotions.
What has been the greatest challenge you’ve faced so far in your development?
So far… actually I know precisely where it stands(still ahead in the coding part).Yet to the moment,the hardest for me (can’t say that it refers to this game specifically) is the time, which I can literally count as 2 days per week.
Are there any challenges that you haven’t worked on yet, but will be coming up in the future?
As I mentioned above the Coding is the hardest part for any artist,for most of us have no programming skills,and as optimistic i was with the Kismet (visual coding/programming) it is not an all solution for everything, the craziest things happen in the code/script, and so far in this section I’m more close to the level of ‘Monkey see, monkey do.’
At this time, how far do you think you are through your development? (Like a percentage?)
Ahh, I was flavoring the expectation for this question. Well on my part (no music [no musical artist], no voices [no actors]) it’d be about ~ 59%
As for the overall ~ 42%
Thank you for your time, and we wish you the best for your development. We’ll be following your progress and look forward to playing the game once it’s completed!
Note: slight grammar and spelling changes were made for the interview.
