Onsen master tv#

Onsen master tv#

As it did for thousands of other creators of his generation, the program helped Fields fall in love with the brief glimpses of anime he found surfing through channels on TV as a kid. Fields' first brushes with that culture came in the form of the Cartoon Network programming block Toonami. The game is clearly and deeply indebted to Japanese culture. There's also an arcade mode, and 2-player local co-op for players to compete for high scores. Mu must keep the onsen stable as yokai invade and cause mischief, while simultaneously solving the disappearance of his master. In Onsen Master, players take on the role of Mu, an apprentice at the onsen who is suddenly thrust into running it singlehandedly when his master disappears. Five years later, Onsen Master's release is finally in sight.

After building some buzz, the team took Onsen Master to Bit Bash Chicago, where they found a publisher in Whitethorn Games. Fields began shopping a prototype around gaming events in Chicago, and the team ran a successful Kickstarter campaign around it. But it wasn't until some time in 2017 that development kicked into high gear. In around 2016, Fields founded WakingOni. 15, 2015 - an exact date supplied by Fields' photo of the white board. The very first brainstorming session for Onsen Master took place Jan. Fields would handle art, he and Robinson would lead design, and Riveron would put it all together in Unity. Robinson then introduced him to a local programmer, Leo Riveron, and the three became a team. Fields' background was in 3D art, so he started tooling around in Unity and put together a small group of characters. So he and Robinson, who was also his roommate at the time, began ideating. 'I couldn't stop talking about it,' he said in a recent interview. She is tasked with keeping the bathhouse clean, shuttling customers to and from their baths, and selecting the right herbal mixtures to satisfy their particular needs. In particular, he was drawn to a segment in which the film's protagonist, Chihiro, works in a massive bathhouse catering to spirits. (Another tip: Take photos of your dry erase brainstorms it's faster than writing everything down.)įields had just finished what he describes as his quarterly viewing of 'Spirited Away,' the Oscar-winning anime film directed by Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki, when he became lightly obsessed with how the film might work as a game. In fact, Fields still has a photo of the white board after the first day of brainstorming for the game. That's what Fields and his WakingOni comrade Tim Robinson did when they came up with the idea for Onsen Master, their forthcoming game about running a natural Japanese hot spring, or onsen, frequented by spirits called yokai. Instead, save some cash by heading to Home Depot and buying the material they use to make the dry erase portion of the boards, then just stick those on the wall.

Here's a life hack for any aspiring game developers, courtesy of WakingOni Games founder Derrick Fields: Don't buy whiteboards. Derrick Fields, founder of WakingOni Games and lead designer on Onsen Master.