(scratching on chalkboard)
(soft instrumental music)
- My name is Andrezej.
I'm English, I've been living in Japan for one year
and I'm a professional video games designer.
When I decided I wanted to study in Japan
I naturally started trawling the internet
looking for Japanese school websites.
So much information, impossible to understand.
So yeah I just found it completely overwhelming
and I was actually at the point of completely
giving up altogether when I just stumbled across
a link to Go! Go! Nihon on a Japanese study forum.
I couldn't really understand how such an amazing service
could be provided for free but anyway
I explained why I wanted to go to Japan,
who I was, what kind of a school I was looking for,
and eventually that led to me finding
the great school I'm studying at now in Kyoto, KICL.
And helping me find an apartment
and helping me with the visa.
The first week was so intense that I didn't really
even have time to start worrying about
what was happening back in England
'cause I was way too worried about what the hell
I was doing in Japan so the best thing that happened
in my first week was starting school.
Maybe even the first day at KICL
I bumped into this fellow named Ferde
and we immediately hit it off because we have
similar interests, geeky interests.
It turns out that he's a professional illustrator
and graphic designer.
I just thought this is a great opportunity
so we got talking, discovered that we both
have a passion for video games.
It's like wow, you feel the same way?
Yeah I feel the same way.
Well let's do something about it.
(upbeat music)
So the goal with Hungry Oni was to create a game
which anyone could play no matter what age,
no matter what their gaming experience, what have you.
There's no point in really explaining the gameplay
because it's just incredibly simple.
And the game is free so the best thing to do
is just download it and give it a go yourself.
The image we had in our minds was
standing on the bus with one hand free,
playing a quick game, less than a minute gameplay session.
And every time you play you're making progress,
you're earning points and every play session
is going to be a worthwhile use of your time.
(upbeat music)
It's better to see the game
than try and explain it with words.
That was what we wanted to achieve with it.
Every day was just a wonderful experience,
making progress and feeling a sense of achievement.
When you're making a game you really need feedback
from other people, people that have never seen the game,
never played the game, don't know anything about the game.
And the way to get that information is just to
actually directly approach people you've never met before,
put the game in front of them and just see what happens.
I'm in Japan, I need to be able
to speak Japanese to do that.
A great thing about Japanese people is they're so polite
that they're very unlikely to turn you down.
You know if I was walking around in London
just asking random strangers, can you just play my game?
It's not gonna happen.
In Japan, people are just oh yeah sure sure,
sure absolutely.
The first thing you need is passion,
real passion for wanting to do it.
I think the hardest thing is just sticking at it
like any project.
Having an idea, starting something is easy,
it's just seeing it through to the end
is the toughest thing.
I can't stress enough how great it is
to have a like-minded partner.
So the game is currently available only for iOS
however an Android version is in the works
and as soon as my exams are finished next week
I'll get to work on it so hopefully by the time
you're seeing this video it should also
be available on Android.
Couldn't have done it without Go! Go! Nihon,
honestly couldn't have done it.
Huge help, can't understand how it's free.
Please explain, can't understand it.
(upbeat instrumental music)