STUDIO PROFILE
ONION GAMES
Life is just dandy for this daringly individual Japanese micro-studio
By Chris Schilling
Yoshiro Kimura’s move into indie games nine years ago felt inevitable. Look through his back catalogue and it reads like that of an indie developer who’s been covertly operating within the publisher system for decades. Since his work on Romancing SaGa 2 and 3 for Square, Kimura’s work has been thrillingly esoteric. Having left the publisher to join Kenichi Nishi’s Love-de-Lic, the Kimura-designed Moon: Remix RPG Adventure thumbed its nose at JRPG conventions, while 2000’s strange, ambitious life sim LOL: Lack Of Love is considered one of the cult classics of the Dreamcast era. Despite a mixed reaction from critics, the likes of Chulip and the controversial PS2 horror Rule Of Rose (which caused such an outcry among the British tabloid press that its UK release was cancelled) only enhanced Kimura’s status as a maverick. Then in 2009 came what many would argue was his crowning glory: RTS RPG Little King’s Story.
But the enthusiastic reviews it received didn’t translate into strong sales, and while he teamed up with Suda 51 for production roles on the likes of No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle and Shadows Of The Damned, Kimura needed a new outlet for his offbeat ideas. It wasn’t until he attended the Game Developers Conference in 2012 – or more specifically, the Independent Games Festival – that he had an epiphany. Gazing up at a large screen of disparate indie games, he felt overwhelmed – and inspired. “For me, it was an experience not unlike shedding a tear at some grand spectacle of Mother Nature,” Kimura tells us. “I just recall being overcome with this nostalgic feeling about hand-crafted games, like the old 8bit computer games from my childhood, being on par with the greatest views nature could offer.”