Here's an update on the development of Arcade Mode, focusing on things other than the music.
The comedic dialogue scene for Stage 5 is now complete.
Implementing this scene ended up taking quite a lot of time.
The current version of Arcade Mode only lets you play through Stage 3, but this article offers an early look at the story and background of Stage 5.
Stage 5 takes a turn toward horror, set in a forbidden area in Kyoto.
Reigen, your opponent in Stage 5, is a ghost who just can't resist scaring people. But Kotaro is hard to scare, leaving Reigen baffled: "Why aren't you frightened?!"
During their conversation, Reigen learns that Kotaro entered the area knowing it was off-limits. Reigen angrily protests, "You can't just walk into a forbidden area!" and threatens him: "You mischievous little brat! I'll teach you a lesson!" This leads straight into a hanafuda match.
I originally designed Reigen as the ghost of a middle-aged man, but after a few twists and turns, the character became a cute girl.
The reference to that incredibly famous line ("In the name of the moon...") and the hairstyle resembling the twin tails of that famous magical girl warrior are there because she was the first character who came to mind when I thought of a "cute girl."
Strictly speaking, though, Reigen's hair isn't styled in twin tails. It's an adaptation of osuberakashi, a traditional formal hairstyle worn by Japanese noblewomen, arranged to look like twin tails.
Cute girl characters are a familiar sight in Japanese doujin (indie) games.
You could even call them a visual shorthand for the typical image of a doujin game.
Still, I feel strongly that adding a cute girl to a game without any reason feels out of place. For example, a muscular Marine would be a better fit than a petite girl as the protagonist of a shooter set on a battlefield.
Reigen was also male in life, so a middle-aged man would be the natural direction for the character's design.
However, although I set out to compose the Stage 5 BGM, already available in Music Room, as a "horror song," it ended up feeling more like "a cute tune about a child trying very hard to scare someone."
In other words, it didn't feel quite right as a middle-aged man's theme. I could scrap the track. In fact, I've already reworked music for Battle Hanafuda many times. But I'm really fond of the current Stage 5 track.
In that case, the only option is to turn Reigen into a cute girl to match the music.
As long as I could explain why Reigen takes the form of a cute girl, I could make this change fit the setting. So I added a piece of background lore: "When a living being has only recently died and become a spirit, its spiritual power is still weak, and it tends to take a form whose gender is ambiguous or whose appearance is younger." This gives Reigen a reason to appear as a little girl.
Note: I currently have no plans to explain this detail in the game itself.
The catch is that I've never designed a cute girl character before.
That makes Reigen the very first cute girl character I've ever designed.
I spent time studying reference books like the one below, which is part of why the process took so long.
The photo above shows the cover of 『ぜったいかわいい！まんがの描きかた⭐︎レッスン』 (roughly, "Super Cute! Lessons in Drawing Manga"), by キラかわまんが研究部 (Kirakawa Manga Kenkyubu), published by Natsumesha.
I'd originally started studying so I could turn the Stage 8 boss (a rabbit) into a cute girl in a very snug outfit. But I got the chance to put what I'd learned into practice sooner than expected, and the work ended up taking longer than I'd anticipated.