Okami -
Review
"Okami" is an action-adventure video game in which you take a role of Amaterasu, a legendary white wolf, on a quest to defeat Orochi, an 8-headed demon and tyrannical monster responsible for turning the world of Nippon into a ruined wasteland. (Taken from Steam)
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The reason why I looked into this game is the art style. We can tell that the style is heavily inspired by Japanese art, as we can see in the game with Paint-Brush-like lines and the world design taken inspirations from Japanese mythology.
Both the Japanese and Chinese art styles are very similar in terms of art style, so this game can help me in bringing inspirations for my game ideas.
I also chose this since it was similar to one of the ideas - Dog comes save the village from hunger by giving them rice to eat. Though, I decided to not go with this idea because of the survey I did. Even so, it was a good idea to look into the game to see what game mechanics I could take from it.
I have taken screenshots of different sections of the game: to see how the game looks and what you do in the game.
Players play as Amaterasu, moving around and completing different objectives. An arrow is displayed to show where they need to go to progress.
Amaterasu has a unique ability in which he can paint lines to perform different actions (i.e. Drawing a horizontal straight line can cut things down). The bottles in the top left corner displays how many times he can paint before it goes into cooldown, waiting until he can paint again.
You can see the very distinct art-style it has, as well as the bold contrasting colours they use to mimic the Japanese art style. The UI and the font fits with it as well.
Amaterasu fights within a closed area against different mobs. Depending how much damage you take and how quickly you end the fight gives you various amount of yen. You can use that yen to buy items/ divine instruments to help you progress through the game
Apart from the main quest, players can choose to do side quests, explore the world, or feed animals. If you feed the right food to the right animal, a small cutscene will play. From this, he can gain "Praise" which makes him stronger.
What to take forward:
How this game stands out amongst its other competitors is its art-style heavily inspired by Japanese art and Folklore. For one of my game ideas, eating other animals to gain abilities, I will think about the art style this game will have so it wouldn't look similar to other Monster Hunting games that are , taking some inspirations from the research/ mood boards I have conducted.
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I purposefully chose this game since it was similar to one of the game ideas I originally had (Dog saving village from hunger) but because of the survey I conducted, I made up an another game idea with animals. I will take inspirations from the mechanics - rather than just fighting animals, is there a possibility that you can befriend some of them and have them fight with you.