The Indie Game Magazine April 2015 | Issue 48 | Page 11

Indie Game
Magazine : After
the original Clock
Tower came out, you weren’t too interested in developing
a sequel. Eventually though, as new technology arrived, you
changed your mind. Along with today’s technological improvements, what makes now the right time to bring a spiritual
successor to life?

to attain “ideal” horror?

Kono: The first thing I would say is that the main character is
the average Joe. Characters with special abilities give an outof-this-world impression, making it hard for the audience to
relate to the character. Also, there shouldn’t be a special reason the main character is being attacked. I feel it is important
to create a world in such a way that the audience feels these
horrifying events could happen to anyone at any given time,
Hifumi Kono: Starting around 5 years back, I began pitching including themselves.
this type of horror game to publishers, but no one was interested. Their reasoning was it is difficult to make up for the Another point is to leave a small amount of hope in any devever increasing production cost with horror games, unless astating situation. Fear and despair are amplified when the
small chance of survival that the characters foster is crushed
they feature zombies.
right in front of their eyes.
In recent years, however, people have begun focusing on indie
games, and because of this, while the development budget is IGM : Project Scissors was originally intended as a mobile
nothing compared to major titles, we are able to create original, game - for PS Vita and Smartphones - with an emphasis on
touch controls. Will accommodating a point-and-click control
cutting edge games.
scheme via mouse as opposed to touch (which assumedly alters
IGM : The team behind NightCry is made up of experienced how quickly players can input commands) affect the game’s
professionals. Can you highlight some particular strengths of moment-to-moment pacing?
the core team members, in regards to how the