Review Fix Exclusive: Inside ‘Ikai’

Review Fix chats with”Ikai” Designer and producer Laura Ripoll, who discusses the game and the impact she’d like it to have on the masses

Review Fix: How was this game born?

Laura Ripoll: Two of us were working together in a videogame company which was about to shut down. At that point we had to take a decision whether to look for another job or to create our own game and work for ourselves. We needed an artist though, so got in touch with an artist colleague from University and he joined us.

Then, the three of us started the brainstorming for the game. Since we all share a common interest among japanese culture, Ikai came almost naturally. Deciding the genre of the game was a bit more challenging but, found out that the one that suits our skills better was psychological horror.

Review Fix: What is your role in the game?

Ripoll: I am the producer and game designer. However, I prefer to define myself as simply a game developer. It is a small team, so we all have to wear many hats and we do other tasks outside our roles.

Review Fix: How did you get involved in the industry?

Ripoll: I can speak on behalf of the three of us because we all met at University, studying the degree of Design and Development of video games. An internship during the fourth year was our entry point into the industry.

Review Fix: What has development been like?

Ripoll: It has really been a mix of feelings. There was a point, after many iterations and testing, where we weren’t scared of the game anymore and started doubting about our own product and felt disillusioned.  However, the reactions of external playtesters and the players of the demo cheered us up and we can’t help but feel proud of Ikai. Game development process is a tough path full of upside downs. Yet the result makes it worth it.

Review Fix: What makes this game special?

Ripoll: The setting of the game itself and the mechanic of writing protective seals are the first features perceived as original and which are thought to make the game special. Nevertheless, I would say that the fundamental is that we care about details. The mechanic itself wouldn’t work on its own if we hadn’t put effort on building-up tension and achieving a great atmosphere.

Even some players have spotted that this effort and caring towards details is actually what makes Ikai special.

Review Fix: What games influenced this one the most?

Ripoll: As the main game references we have Amnesia, Layers of Fear, Fatal frame and Clock Tower. Each in a different way, have influenced the design of Ikai, trying to extrapolate what we liked the most and avoiding what we enjoyed the least.

Review Fix: Any fun stories or wild moments during development?

Ripoll: Since we started the development of Ikai we relate any frightening situation with our game and vice versa. When we went on a trip to a tropical country, a cockroach entered our room. It was the biggest cockroach we had ever seen and we had no insecticide. The hotel had run out of this product and it was midnight so we didn’t know how to deal with it. We realized that it is scarier to face your enemy defenceless rather than having something to go for it. And that can also be seen in our game.

Review Fix: What were the major lessons learned?

Ripoll: As a developer, your own game will stop frightening you at some point, and it does not mean it is not scary. We have learnt that to know if something will be scary, we have to trust our intuition and then let our target try it out to verify. It is very important that they are the target players that will potentially buy your game, asking a friend that doesn’t play this sort of video games will not help in this sense. If someone does not want to be scared and get into the mood, the game won’t be able to do so.

Another major lesson we’ve learnt is that you have to communicate with your players. If a bug prevents someone from playing and you have been told about it, try to fix it and give this person a chance to play your game. We’ve seen that people really appreciate this communication and they turn out to be very supportive if you directly ask them for opinions or follow their advice.

Review Fix: Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?

Ripoll: Yes I do, I think innovation comes from evolution after all. It’s good to keep building a game from the fundamentals. New games can change certain things to, of course, make the gameplay different but, innovating in everything is almost impossible, so just keeping old mechanics is great. It is something that already proved to work in older games.

Review Fix: What’s your favorite memory as a gamer?

Ripoll: I normally play computer or playstation games. And I have enjoyed many single-player titles, that is indeed what I consume the most.

However, my greatest memories involve playing party games with my family. I somehow felt I was sharing my passion with them, who weren’t really into video games, yet they were laughing and having a good time. That could be, for example, when I got the game “Buzz!: quizz” as a present when I was a child. My family and I spent a good time together playing it.

Review Fix: How do you want this game to ultimately be remembered?

Ripoll: I’d like it to be remembered as the expression of Japanese folklore into a horror game. Not just another horror game.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Ripoll: We have to now focus on getting the game finished. Launching the demo was a point we knew we had to make a decision, giving up if the reactions were too bad or keeping up if we could see people asked for more. So here we are now, trying to finish the game by mid-2021.

Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?

Ripoll: I would like to encourage everyone to try out our demo. We love to read different opinions, feedback and point of views. Any comment is welcome. It is not just us, but all of our players who make the game with their suggestions and ideas. https://endflame.itch.io/ikai-demo