From July 19th to 21st, Kyoto became a hotbed of creativity, passion, and enjoyment as the 12th annual BitSummit gaming convention kicked off. Starting as a relatively small gathering of friends and mutual acquaintances, it has since evolved into the biggest event of the summer, taking up two floors of Miyako Messe and dominating the weekend. I was lucky enough to attend for two of the three days, had some incredible experiences, and broke bread with a good number of developers.

The good folk at Shueisha Games had a large presence there this year and were kind enough to spend time with me as I got to see their upcoming games and talk with their developers. The first, Hakababunko, was there to showcase the upcoming Urban Myth Dissolution Center, which will be getting a Steam release sometime in the near future. An intricate mystery title draped in positively creepy graphics of pixel-perfect discomfort, the game focuses on a young girl becoming mixed up in a group dedicated to solving the strange happenings that continue to occur in their small town. A point-and-click adventure with plenty of weird and wild happenings, the demo gave me a taste of the conversational elements, as well as how logical conclusion leads to unraveling the mysteries therein.

This feels like maybe something terrible is about to happen. Call it a hunch.

 I got a chance to speak with the lead designer, Half Half Oden, about the creative process and the overall effect of Urban Myth Dissolution Center. Joining me was Shueisha Game’s Tomoya Tanaka, as well as some volunteer translators for BitSummit to help both sides of the table interpret the conversation. It should be noted that the volunteers were lovely, incredible people, and I sincerely appreciated their time and efforts to help make this interview and the subsequent interviews possible.

 

I’m sorry, I haven’t been in a while: is this your first visit to Bitsummit?

I’ve been coming here for a while now; since 2016.

Are you originally from the Kansai area?

Yes, myself and nearly everyone from the team are from Kansai as well.

So you’re doing alright with this summer heat?

My God, it’s far too hot. [shared laughter]

 

Can the small talk, let’s get to the action!

To begin with: can you tell me a little bit about Urban Myth Dissolution Center?

It’s not a horror game: it’s more of an adventure game, a mystery adventure specifically.

For UMDC, what are your inspirations that helped craft the world within the game?

For our team (Hakababunko), we focus mostly on mystery games. We thought about creating a sort of mysterious gaming world, full of uncanny elements, which lead to the creation of UMDC. It’s most important for us to focus on the suspense and questions that come from such a line of work and setting.

You love mystery games so much, were any titles from your childhood impacting this creation?

We talked about this as a team once. We all decided to not use any games, specific or otherwise, to influence the creation and direction of our own game. Instead, we draw from novels that we’ve all read. The ones that had the most impact were written by Natsuhiko Kyogoku. His works were very influential in how we told the story.

 

I love every world where the police are incapable or powerless against forces that plucky high schoolers can handle.

For your first title, the Makoto Wakaido trilogy, many of the mysteries were quite short, usually finishing in an hour or so. Can players expect UMDC to run longer or be about the same?

It was very important for us during the development process to think about the timing. We’re used to making shorter games that can be finished quickly, usually about one to two hours each. This time, it was crucial to focus on the story and mysteries that are all interwoven together. It created something larger, and when we talked to the publisher (Shueisha Games), it’s how the length of UMDC came to be. As a result, it’s multiple one to two hour mysteries that become a larger world overall.

With a name like “Urban Myth,” it implies a lot of the “local” stories; will the mysteries be heavily influenced by Japanese yokai figures and the like?

I, myself, love yokai in general, but we wanted to make sure that the gameplay was more focused on a modern perspective in both the mysteries and the elements of discovery themselves. Therefore, anything with yokai is more subtle instead of being overt.

Moving onto the art styling: many of your titles have a heavy focus on pixel art. What do you feel makes pixel art so appealing in today’s age of modern graphics and design engines?

Pixel art is becoming more accepted in these most recent years. Different from the 80s and 90s when developers could ONLY use pixel art, nowadays we use it as a form of elevating the mystery within the game. We feel that pixel art combined with the story matches the “mystery” elements best.

Look, it’s my inner dialogue every time I have a small body ache.

 

Many pixel art games also prefer a chiptune soundtrack to help capture the full feeling of the timeframe, but I noticed that UMDC chooses to go with a more robust soundtrack. Is there any reason for the separation?

Basically, the reason we didn’t use chiptune is that it really conveys “retro,” which we’re trying to stay away from. The pixel art aesthetic specifically captures our vision, but there’s nothing about UMDC that is meant to be retro. It’s a modern game, in a modern setting, that is best painted in pixel art.

With this game, as it is a mystery adventure, will players be looking for multiple endings to discover within the game?

[at this point, there was a lot of pointed looks between the developer and the publisher]

Ah, for fans of our games, they understand that we offer one ending. It’s a single mystery, so there should be one ending they are focused on to best complete the story. As a result, fans should expect to find one ending waiting for them at the conclusion of the game.

 

Within Urban Myth Dissolution Center, is this a standalone story or will more titles within the world of UMDC be in the future?

We have many messages and stories within our games, but we consider our games to be more like junk food: something you enjoy in the moment but not really lasting. It’s like watching episodes of X-Files; many of them were great in the moment, but once the episode was done you didn’t need further explanation or details to give more than the entertainment you received at the time.

 

You look far too young to be referencing X-Files.

[laughing] Thank you, but I just turned 50.

Lastly, is there any message you want to share with players coming into your games for the first time?

For the players who may think the game is going to be a bit scary: rest assured, it’s more mystery, though it’ll be a bit unsettling. I hope players can appreciate the graphics and the story, as we’ve worked very hard on them, and, if players can enjoy those, then we’ll be very grateful and satisfied.

 

Urban Myth Dissolution Center will be released on Nintendo Switch and Steam at some point in the future.