Konnichiwa everyone! 👋
It’s me, Wedy Jones! We hope you had a good holiday break, because now it’s 2026, and we’re racing head‑first (and ever closer!) toward Nippon Marathon 2: Daijoubu launching into Early Access.
As we prepare for that moment, we thought it’d be fun to show you how we build our stages: from the first spark of inspiration to full‑blown chaos, all cooked up inside Onion Soup Interactive HQ (The spare room in our house).
So let’s rewind to the very start, where every stage truly begins.
🧭 Step 1: Location Location Location
Did you know each stage is (loosely) based on real Japanese locations? So first, we need to do some research… and by “research,” we mean this:
We travel to Japan.
We admire the scenery.
We eat a melon bun.
We say something like:
“Wow, Japan is beautiful.”
Then immediately follow it with:
“Yokohama reminds us of Shenmue. Let's make a Harbour stage and fill it with sailors doing stupid things!”
And just like that, a stage concept is born.
Real places give us the starting point.
Then we get to work adding the Nippon Marathon flavour.
(We haven’t visited every location in Japan… but that's what NHK is for, right? )
🎲 Step 2: Add Obstacles Until It Hurts
Now we have a location - we need obstacles.
Obstacles aren’t just hazards. They’re part of the rhythm, the comedy, and the inevitable falls you’ll absolutely experience.
So we ask ourselves:
“How can we make this place as gloriously inconvenient as possible?”
Maybe there is a building site that you have to run through before you reach the docks?
Building sites often use chutes for quickly sending rubble to the ground level. Chutes are just slides... Everyone loves slides!
We want stages to be fun even if you've played them many times, so we include hazards that are hard to predict. So naturally the chutes should send you into.... busy traffic!
Do these things happen often in real life?
…No.
Do they feel like they should happen in Nippon Marathon?
Absolutely.
Whatever ridiculous idea pops into our heads, we write it down.
(We are extremely professional.)
📦 Step 3: Introduce Items Nobody Asked For
Now we have a location and some obstacles, we sprinkle in the Nippon Marathon essentials:
Strategically placed fruit weapons
A bamboo man doing… this [pictured above]
A suspicious number of blue barrels
Checkpoints
Super fans holding signs cheering you on
They’re silly, yes, but they also shape the tactics you’ll use mid‑race - like picking up fruit or weaving under the bamboo men.
🌀 Step 4: Break Everything (Scientifically)
So now we have a location, obstacles, and items - we nearly have a stage.
Now comes the most important part: TESTING!
You may be surprised at how much testing goes into a game that often feels like no testing has been done.
But that’s the beauty of Nippon Marathon, it’s all about balancing chaos in a way that is controlled… but still unpredictable.
During testing, things get messy fast:
Players might go the wrong way so the stage needs better signposting
Someone else gets hit by traffic and flies off the stage
An end of the round Freeze-frame gets accidentally NSFW
And while all this is happening, we take extremely serious, highly scientific notes like:
“Does Zenbei need a modesty filter for his uniform?”
“Increase homing melon range 10%”
“Add three more Shiba by the crossing.”
“Player 2 always gets attacked by a Shiba when spawning in at checkpoint 3... leave this in?”
This is the moment when a real‑life location stops being a place… and officially becomes a Nippon Marathon stage.
🎭 Step 5: The DAIJOUBU Seal of Approval
Before a stage earns its final stamp of approval, we unleash it on our Discord play testers - the brave runners who willingly dive into unfinished chaos, discover bugs we didn’t know existed, and somehow find shortcuts we definitely didn’t put there on purpose. This type of closed beta testing allows us to accommodate more playstyles than just our own.
Their reactions, screenshots, and “uh… is this meant to happen?” moments help us shape each course into its final form.
A stage is complete when:
Someone goes flying
Everyone finds it hilarious
Everyone wants to play it once more
We play it again
Everyone demands we play it twice more
If it makes us shout DAIJOUBU, it’s ready for the world.
(As we covered in our last blog post… shouting DAIJOUBU it is a good sign.)
🛒 Your Wishlist Makes a Huge Difference
You’ve watched us travel, trip, test, and shout DAIJOUBU - now help us launch this beautiful chaos into the world.
Wishlist Nippon Marathon 2: Daijoubu on Steam today.
🔜 Coming Up Next: Stage Spotlight - Yolko Harbour
Now let’s jump into your first destination in Nippon Marathon 2: Daijoubu; Yolko Harbour, a bustling port full of sailors, freighters, and one octopus who definitely did not sign up for this shift.
So until next time…
Stay Daijoubu,
Wedy Jones