At PAX West this year, T-ONO had the opportunity to play a few rounds of Obakeidoro 2: Catch and Seek with its director, Katsunori Tanaka. With its cute aesthetic and simple yet nuanced gameplay, it was an unsuspecting party game that was able to grab our attention among the bells and whistles of the show floor.
TONO: Thank you very much for letting us play Obakeidoro 2 today.
Katsunori Tanaka: Thank you too.
T-ONO: And I want to say congratulations on the worldwide release of your game last month on August 6th. How does it feel to have your game finally released to the public?
KT: I am really happy watching everybody playing the game at the events.
T-ONO: That is great to hear. Trying out Obakeidoro 2 was a lot of fun today. It’s a very fun game to play with friends and with kids. Was your plan to make a game that was good for everyone?
KT: Yes, that is correct. I am aiming for everyone to be happy. Originally, the concept of this game is to have an event, and then everybody to be happy. So, right now, I am watching everyone having a happy time; seeing everybody loving the game and enjoying it. Watching that is very happy for me, and also for the team.
T-ONO: Overall, it is just a very fun and entertaining game to play especially in a group. I’ve played a lot of these similar games, like Dead by Daylight, but the themes are very dark and the matches can be rather long. Why did you decide on only having a 3-minute match instead of longer matches, like other similar games in the genre?
KT: The event that we were aiming for, originally, was for Obakeidoro 2 to be played together under the sun, like in summer, and you know how the Japanese summers are, right? 30-some degrees, and everybody doesn’t want to be waiting too long under the sun. So, we decided to keep the matches 3 minutes long. That way, everyone can come back and play again and again, but 3 minutes is the max for being in the summer heat.
T-ONO: I was also told that you might be planning to release some new DLCs coming up soon. What should we expect to see in these upcoming updates?
KT: Probably. (Laughs) Probably some updates. For PAX, we have all the characters in Obakeidoro 2 for people to try out, but for DLCs and what comes after that, it’s a secret!
T-ONO: Thank you very much for letting us try out your game today at PAX, and we really hope the release of Obakeidoro 2 has been going well. Is there something you would like to tell our audience about your game, and what you would like them to experience when they play in the future?
KT: We are planning to have more updates soon, and we want everybody to have a happy time playing our game.
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