What exactly is an interesting game?
It wasn’t until I made a paper game in kindergarten that I started thinking about this seriously.
The first thing I thought of that day was a game where you manage food, calculate fatigue, and even the difficulty of movement changes depending on the terrain and weather. However, Haru and his friends had little need for such things.
Roll the dice and advance by the number you rolled.
You’re happy when you find a treasure chest.
When you land on a monster’s square, it’s time to play rock, paper, scissors.
In the end, all that remained were simple rules like that, but surprisingly, everyone had fun and laughed.
“…I wonder what was so interesting?”
After returning from kindergarten, I spread out my notebook in my room.
I can only use my computer for one hour a day. It would be a shame to waste that precious time just thinking, so lately I’ve started putting my thoughts together on paper first.
I wrote “Interesting” in the center of a new page and drew a line below it.
The first thing I remembered was Haru’s face when he rolled a six.
Even though he had only rolled the dice once, he was as happy as if he had accomplished some great task. The same went for the girl who found the treasure chest, and the boy who lost at rock-paper-scissors to the monster was seriously disappointed.
I was able to cross the river. I couldn’t cross.
I won. I lost.
Even though they were all small events that only lasted a few seconds, emotions moved every time.
“Winning, huh?”
I wrote my first word.
You’re happy if you win.
In that case, it was similar to when my father killed his first deer in LITTLE FRONTIER.
After the deer escaped several times and he took the direction of the wind into account, my father clenched his fists when the arrow finally hit it.
It’s not just about defeating the enemy.
Being able to do things you couldn’t do before.
There’s also joy in feeling like you’ve gotten a little better.
Below that, I wrote “Become stronger.”
Obtaining stronger weapons, learning new techniques, and being able to defeat enemies you couldn’t defeat before are all connected to this.
The next thing I remembered was when the cave was discovered on the bulletin board.
A place that no one knew about suddenly appeared.
No one even knew what was in there.
Despite that, many people were engrossed in investigating it.
“Find…”
Find a place you don’t know.
Go to a cave that no one has ever entered. Try walking to the edge of the map.
Just thinking that there’s something I don’t know yet makes me want to go beyond it.
And I’d be even happier if I found something there.
It could be a rare weapon, material, or jewel.
It must be the same reason Haru and the others were so fascinated by the treasure chest, which was just a circle drawn on a piece of paper.
“And collect, too.”
Then, four words were lined up in the notebook: “win,” “become stronger,” “find,” and “collect.”
They’re all simple.
And each of them takes only a short time to achieve once.
That’s why you can create small joys over and over again.
But–
“If you keep repeating this all the time, you’ll get bored.”
If you just keep defeating the same monsters and opening the same treasure chests, it may be fun at first, but eventually you’ll get used to it.
Even with the paper game in kindergarten, every time we finished playing, everyone would say, “One more time,” but I don’t think they’d feel the same joy even if they played it a hundred or a thousand times.
In that case, beyond the small goals, there should be a bigger purpose.
I opened a new page and drew a large circle in the center.
I wrote “Final Goal” inside.
On your way there, you defeat enemies, become stronger, find new locations, and collect equipment.
You progress by accumulating small achievements, and in the end, there’s an opponent you challenge using everything you’ve acquired up to that point.
“…The last boss.”
Put into words, it was far too ordinary.
There were plenty of things like that in the games of my previous life.
It could be a huge weapon. It could be a space monster. It doesn’t matter if it’s an artificial intelligence or the emperor of an empire.
There’s just one thing that must be defeated in the end, and a single line runs through all the actions accumulated up to that point.
“I see.”
I’d come to understand a little bit.
《LITTLE FRONTIER》 has no end.
Still, my father and the people on the bulletin board were looking forward to what would happen to their villages in the future.
On the other hand, because there’s an end, there’s also the joy of moving toward it.
It’s not a matter of which one is correct.
I guess it’s just a different type of fun.
“Okay, next time let’s make something easier to understand.”
The moment you start the game, you know what you need to do.
Defeat enemies, become stronger, discover unknown places, and collect treasure.
And beyond all of that, there’s a big goal that anyone can see.
After thinking that far, one phrase naturally came to mind.
“Defeat the Demon King.”
To me, it was commonplace.
But――
“…That’s nice.”
That’s fine this time.
Travel through a world of swords and magic, explore labyrinths, open treasure chests, fight monsters, and finally defeat the Demon King.
It’s such a classic combination that it’s hard to tell how many times it’s been used, but the fact that it’s been used for so long also means its meaning can be conveyed intuitively.
I opened a new page and wrote in big letters at the top.
――A royal-road action RPG.
“This time, let’s seriously create the royal road.”
◇
First, I prepared a single continent as the stage.
It was incomparably wider than LITTLE FRONTIER.
If you go north, snowy fields spread out, and to the south there’s the ocean. To the east is a huge mountain range, and to the west is a dry desert.
The largest kingdom of mankind was placed in the center, and four nations were placed around it.
I didn’t want the world to be just humans, so I placed long-lived races in the forests, dwarves in the mountains, beastmen tribes in the south, and several other races with different cultures.
And the northernmost tip of the continent.
I made that area the domain of the Demon King.
Humanity has continued to lose territory little by little to the Demon King, who appeared a hundred years ago, and his army.
At the start of the game, humans control approximately 60% of the continent.
The rest is on the monster side.
The player has only one goal from the beginning.
To defeat the Demon King.
“With this, you won’t have to worry about what to do.”
LITTLE FRONTIER had no clear purpose.
So this time, I’d make it so you could understand the final goal within a minute of starting the game.
However, just because there’s one goal doesn’t mean you have to follow the same path to get there.
Generals under the Demon King’s direct command were placed in various parts of the map.
Some invade the kingdom in the north, while others target trade routes in the west. Some generals control the southern seas, while others seek to push the central front forward.
It doesn’t matter which one you defeat first.
You can head to the Demon King’s castle after defeating them all, or if the conditions are right, you can ignore most of the generals and advance straight to the Demon King.
However, if the player could move freely, I thought the enemy should also be able to move freely.
“There’s no need for them to wait.”
If you leave the northern general alone, he’ll immediately invade the northern kingdom.
If the west is left alone, the trade routes will be destroyed and supplies will no longer be able to get through.
If the southern sea area is taken, the port city will weaken, and depending on the war situation, the city itself will fall.
If that happens, soldiers will die, refugees will appear, and national borders will change.
On the other hand, if a player saves a certain region quickly, the troops that would have been used there can be diverted to other fronts.
If the town you rescue is different, the people who survive will also be different.
After writing that far, my pencil stopped.
“…Is this really necessary?”
I’d just learned it in kindergarten.
If it’s complicated, it’s not interesting.
Even if this mechanism were completely removed, it would still work as a game about defeating the Demon King.
Even if the enemies waited in fixed locations and the player defeated them one by one, it could still be an RPG.
So I thought about it a little.
If I were the one playing, what if the town I didn’t save really fell? On the other hand, what if someone survived because I helped them? What if I later thought to myself, “What would have happened if I had gone somewhere else?”
“…Yeah. This looks interesting.”
It’s not included because it’s necessary.
It’s not included because it’s close to reality.
I put it in because I want to play with it myself.
I felt like my criteria for judgment had become a little easier to understand than before.
◇
The next thing I focused on was a system that would let the player feel a sense of accomplishment at short intervals.
If you defeat an enemy, you receive experience points, and if you accumulate a certain amount, your level increases.
As your abilities improve, you become able to learn techniques you couldn’t use before.
Defeating strong enemies would yield rare equipment, and along the paths of exploration, I left treasure chests that would make you happy to find.
In the depths of a cave. On top of an old tower. Behind collapsed ruins. And behind a waterfall.
“Aren’t there a lot of treasure chests?”
Before I knew it, my father, who had been looking at the screen from behind me, let out a slightly exasperated voice.
“I guess so.”
“It feels like you’re putting them all over the place a lot more than before.”
“I mean, it would be lonely if you went to look behind a waterfall and there was nothing there.”
“Ah… I understand that.”
“That’s why I put one there.”
“Always?”
“Always.”
Dad laughed.
“Lately, your reasons for developing things have gotten much simpler.”
“I’m just putting things in because they look interesting.”
“It feels healthier than before.”
“I think I was healthy before, too.”
“I don’t know if a five-year-old using geological calculations to collapse mountains and grow caves can be called healthy.”
I wondered what he was talking about. I think it’s healthy.
◇
As for combat, it took a lot of time.
Swing the sword. Dodge enemy attacks. Parry at the right time.
Use magic, run to gain distance if necessary, and jump over any bumps.
What you do is simple.
That’s why each action has to feel good.
The moment the sword hits the enemy, the response should be felt through both sound and movement.
If the weapon is heavy, the enemy’s body shakes a lot.
If you use a dagger, its power is low, but you can attack quickly and in succession.
A spear lets you fight at long range, and a shield makes it easier to block attacks from the front.
However, here too, being faithful to reality wasn’t enough.
In reality, if you swing a large sword over and over again, your arm gets tired.
If you fall while wearing heavy armor, just getting back up is difficult.
I could reproduce all of that, too.
I could, but–
“I don’t need fatigue calculations.”
This time, I deleted them.
I tried to imagine a game where you take a break after each battle, worrying about fatigue, but it didn’t fit the game I was trying to make this time.
On the other hand, I kept the mechanism where weapons gradually become damaged.
However, if they broke frequently during battle, it would be more troublesome than fun.
The durability value decreases slowly, and if you take care of a weapon, you can use it for a long time.
Although I kept meals and sleep, I had no intention of completely reproducing daily life.
“I don’t need excretion…”
There was no hesitation.
What exists in reality and what’s necessary for the game aren’t the same.
Leave only the reality that’s necessary.
The choice was more difficult than I expected.
If you just want to add something, you can just add what you know.
But when you cut something, you have to think about whether the fun will still be there after you remove it.
This was something I wasn’t really aware of when I was making LITTLE FRONTIER.
◇
I also built several towns.
Starting with the first small town on the frontier, I prepared a seaside port town, a mining city surrounded by mountains, a religious city that developed around a huge temple, and even the largest royal capital of mankind.
Of course, I didn’t just leave the buildings empty.
I created the people who live there, such as store owners, guards, craftsmen, adventurers, children, travelers, merchants, and aristocrats, and let each of them have their own life.
In the morning, they go to work, eat, have a conversation with someone, and in the evening they go home.
Because they’re people, their relationships change as well.
Some people fight, while others fall in love and get married.
Sometimes they change jobs, sometimes they get sick.
They can die in accidents or of old age.
Additionally, as war approaches, life in the entire town changes.
If the number of soldiers increases, the amount of food consumed increases, the goods in the market decrease, and prices rise.
An influx of refugees could lead to a housing shortage and worsen security.
On the other hand, when the front lines move away, merchants return, festivals are held, and closed shops may open again.
I thought about it again while looking at the processes lined up on the screen.
“This… is probably too much.”
Even without something like this, the Demon King can be defeated.
Even if the people in town stood in the same place every day, it could still be played as an RPG.
However, when the war is won, streets that were filled with refugees until yesterday slowly return to normal.
Festivals are held in the towns you rescued, and shops close in the towns you didn’t make it to in time.
I think that’s what I’d like to see when I go back there again.
“…Let’s keep it.”
This time, I didn’t hesitate much.
◇
I also made books.
Books placed on in-game bookshelves for someone to read.
Some books are about history, while others are about cooking and travel. I wanted to prepare religious books, romance novels, poetry collections, and even soldiers’ diaries.
I don’t know how many years it would have taken me to write each book by myself.
That’s why I decided to create not the books themselves, but the people who write them.
When was that person born, what country did they grow up in, what kind of education did they receive, what did they believe in, and what did they experience?
I built an auxiliary system that generates text based on these.
Then, even books written about the same war have different contents.
History books from the winning country talk about their country’s glory.
In the country that lost, it’s recorded as a tragedy that must not be forgotten.
If it were the diary of a soldier who took part in the same war, it might contain more personal details.
“It rained all day. The insides of my shoes got wet and it was the worst.”
Even just one sentence like that becomes that person’s memory of the war.
Probably no player will read all of these.
That’s fine.
You don’t have to read them if you don’t want to.
However, when someone who wants to know more about the world looks at the bookshelf, there’s something there for them.
That’s the kind of place I wanted it to be.
◇
After that, I continued to make it little by little every day.
I went to kindergarten and played with Haru and the others, and when I got home, I sat down with my notebook and thought about what I was going to make next.
Then I implemented it during my one hour on the computer.
In the first month, I created the basic parts of the game, and in the second month, I got the continent and cities into shape.
After entering the third month, I spent my time focusing on the people living there and the events they caused.
However, I felt that the word “event” wasn’t quite right.
What I wanted to do wasn’t decide the outcome and have the characters act accordingly.
Who likes whom?
Which country is wary of its neighbors?
Where are the resources, and who wants them?
What are they afraid of, and what are they trying to protect?
I prepared things up to that point.
From there, everyone should move on their own.
Of course, sometimes things didn’t go as I planned.
One day, the king died much earlier than expected.
“…Isn’t that early?”
I investigated the cause.
It seemed that the anxiety caused by the war and chronic sleep deprivation had combined with a chronic illness he already had.
The process was natural.
“Then I guess it can’t be helped.”
I left it as is.
Then, with the death of the king, a battle for succession to the throne began.
Reinforcements that were originally supposed to be sent to the central front were pulled back into the country, and as a result, the front line collapsed and a city was taken by the Demon King’s army.
When the consequences spread that far, I was a little confused.
The development was quite different from what I had originally imagined.
However, the causes of everything were within the world.
If…
“This is possible too.”
I left it.
On another day, a person who was supposed to play an important role in the latter half of the story was attacked and killed by bandits while traveling.
“…This is troublesome.”
Without that person, the planned quest itself wouldn’t begin.
I could bring them back to life.
I could also pretend the encounter with the bandits never happened.
But if I did that, in the end I’d just be returning the world to the outcome I had decided.
After thinking about it for a while, I added the possibility that someone else would discover the research materials that person left behind and continue the work.
The story with the person you were originally supposed to meet disappears.
Instead, a different story is born that follows what that person left behind.
Even if someone disappears, everything doesn’t necessarily end there.
Someone else may pick up where they left off for a different reason.
I thought that kind of world would be fine.
◇
The last day of the third month.
After completing all the checks, I displayed the title screen.
Silver letters appeared in the center of the black background.
《FRONTIER SAGA》
“…It’s normal.”
Even the title was classic.
That’s fine this time.
When I selected New Game, I could see snowy mountains in the distance.
Beyond them stood the Demon King’s Castle, so huge it seemed to dye the sky black.
Eventually, the screen went dark, and short sentences appeared.
――A hundred years ago, the Demon King appeared.
――Humanity has lost 40% of the continent.
――The Five Kingdoms continue to resist.
――However, the day of defeat is near.
The text disappeared and the scene changed.
At an inn in a small village, an adventurer got up from his bed.
Beyond the window, the mountains of the Demon King’s territory could be seen in the distance.
Then, the first objective was displayed on the screen.
《Defeat the Demon King》
“…Easy to understand.”
I made it myself, but it made me laugh a little.
The purpose couldn’t be simpler.
Below that, I added just one small line.
《Recommended level: None》
“Okay.”
When I looked at the clock, I saw that I only had two minutes left for today.
After saving the data and confirming that everything was working properly, I closed the computer.
“Done.”
I tried saying it out loud.
This is the second game I’ve made in my second life, after LITTLE FRONTIER.
It’s completely different from the previous work.
This time there’s an end, and there’s also victory and defeat.
You become stronger, collect treasures, fight strong enemies, and the Demon King waits ahead of you.
It’s a royal road that can be found anywhere.
But this time, I seriously created that royal road.
◇
After dinner.
Dad was sitting on the sofa looking at his smartphone.
“Dad, I finished a game.”
At that moment, the fingers that were moving across the screen stopped.
Dad slowly looked up.
“…A new game?”
“It’s not LITTLE FRONTIER, it’s something else.”
Dad put his smartphone on the table.
“Wait a minute. How long did it take you to make it this time?”
“Three months.”
“…Three months?”
For some reason, I felt strangely reminded of something.
“That’s right.”
“Not three hours?”
“Last time it was three hours, but this time it’s three months. I can only use it for one hour a day.”
Dad’s face tightened little by little.
“Did you work on it every day?”
“Even on the days I didn’t touch the computer. When I couldn’t use it, I thought about it in my notebook.”
“…I see.”
Dad put his hand on his forehead.
“What’s wrong?”
“As a parent, I get a little scared when the kid who made the last one in three hours tells me this one took three months.”
“That’s weird.”
“So, what did you make this time?”
“An ordinary action RPG.”
When I said that, my father clearly looked suspicious.
“Is it really ordinary?”
“Adventuring in a world of swords and magic, becoming stronger, and finally defeating the Demon King. It’s a pretty classic journey.”
“…That’s all?”
“You can choose the order you take things on in the middle, though.”
“See, there it is.”
“What?”
“You think that ‘freedom in the middle’ part is normal.”
“But this time, it’s really easy to understand. It tells you what to do from the beginning.”
“What?”
“Defeat the Demon King.”
Dad looked a little relieved.
“Oh. When you put it like that, it’s definitely normal.”
“Right?”
“…And it took three months?”
“Yeah.”
Silence fell for a while.
Dad looked at me, then at the closed laptop.
Then, he returned his gaze to me again.
“Can I ask you one thing?”
“Okay.”
“This time, while I’m playing somewhere else, a country I don’t know about won’t be destroyed on its own, right?”
“Depending on the circumstances, it’ll perish.”
“So it’s not normal after all!”
“It’s a war, so that’s what happens when you lose.”
“I think I heard that same logic when the meat rotted in LITTLE FRONTIER!”
Dad held his head.
After thinking for a while, I said,
“But it’s just a normal game where you defeat the Demon King, right?”
“That ‘normal’ of yours is the thing I can trust the least…”
Although Dad let out a big sigh, there was a slight smile on his lips.
We don’t use ads!
If you enjoyed our translation, please consider buying us a cup…
Thanks!!!
Become a Patron!
We don’t use ads!
If you enjoyed our translation, please consider buying us a cup…
Thanks!!!
Become a Patron!