The art of creating more than just games: Vanillaware’s crown

A studio founded by former Atlus employees from which game director George Kamitani stands out by having also worked on Square-Enix and Capcom in projects of vital experience, such as Dungeons and dragons: Tower of doom and Shadow Over Mystara. 

Vanillaware has made a name of itself by presenting on each of its games a great focus on art and animation, usually inspired on fantasy or mythological themes, with an excellent execution.  (If you are interested, the guys at Art-Eater did a great analysis on the influential material of one of the promotional trailers for “Dragons Crown” their latest title). 

The achievement whoever, goes not simply in making the concept art for the game, but in the seamlessly transition between art and game play, creating a feeling on the player of having an interactive experience in these motion paintings.  With some animation and coding tricks, as well as several countless hand draw frames, the world and characters comes to life without sacrificing one stroke of art.

Merit to Vanillaware’s  artwork , which style stands out form any other of the media, they have portrayed masterfully occidental and eastern mythologies as they have shown in the different games, such as Grand knights Story and Muramasa the Demon Blade by adding a style easy to distinguish from others or the source material; In their Japanese heritage is still present the anime or manga influence by portraying characters with proportions similar to the ones used on those media, as well as their face features; they tend to the use of broad brushes of color that makes for an interesting result to say the least, as if watercolor and oleo were blend together, East and Occident; however, we can find that their work is definitely influenced by that of FrankFrazetta (click to see his work), a famous fantasy illustrator in the 70s and 80s. 

But a game is not just pretty visuals, despite of how good they may be. And here is where the expertise of George Kamitani comes to place, despite of the games claimed to be fairly simplistic and usually too ambitious, the studio shows with authority the compression they have over the genre they are implementing, usually with the addition of role play elements in 2d.  

Odin sphere, their first title, a side scrolling action RPG set within Nordic mythologies  is a clear continuation of ideas form a game called Princess Crown on Sega’s Saturn, from when the studio was called Puraguru.  It not only delivers on a fluid and engaging gameplay experience, but also on a solid and genuinely interesting plot and writing, filled with awesome artwork and music. 

Shortly after, they started working on GrimGrimoire an RTS on a magic thematic experience with a rock-papers-scissors system to balance the unit types. Just as their first game, it was praised by its aesthetics, voice acting, writing and solid game mechanics.

Muramasa the Demon Blade: with the use of only 2 buttons, is other masterpiece form the studios. Set in the Genroku Japanese era, with fantasy elements of course, is regarded as one of the best of the company; a metroid-vannia side scrolling game with fast and fluid combat system, easy to learn hard to master. This highly polished title shows the experience they've accumulated with their previous games in all regards,  their animation and artistic techniques reached new heights that they will further improve on their most expensive and ambitious title…

Dragon’s Crown, many firsts for the studio also meant a full circle for George Kamitani, having previously worked on dungeons and dragons for Capcom, this too, a 2d beat ‘em up 4 player title set in a sword and magic medieval world, the first game from vanillaware with online coop and the first game they do in HD. It of course had a long development cycle and due the meager and late updates, at one point was believed to be canned; also flamed by the over-the-top features of several of the playable characters, mainly the ones of the sorceress class, whether some may or may not like, did not affect in any way the quality of art direction this game has. 

Never before we have seen so many frames on the screen by one of the studio’s titles and not only the number is the impressive feat, but the care and detail in which every one of this were made. It has all the features that makes so aesthetically appealing every vanillaware’s title and exponentially improve on them. 

The game-play, as I stated early has the basics of an arcade classic 4 player beat ‘em up, but as is staple with vanillaware, it manages to add a leveling up system, optional quest and loot, among other features; a game where preparation is as important as execution; and execute you will, every class controls notoriously different, finding the one you feel most comfortable and learning it is very reminiscent of those arcade sessions, but the RPG elements really mix things up and adds length to an otherwise brief experience. 

During the development of the story mode you’ll met characters portrayed in beautiful paintings with elegant and subtle animation while the narrator describes the situation. This works wonders with the game story-line and lets your imagination fly in each of this small encounters. 

On an interview made to Kamitani before launching Muramasa the Demon’s Blade on 2009 said that the company had grown to 21 employees, whom he described as “Basically, 100% artists”; at that time a small studio, no doubt.

But despite of it, that fact represents the strong focus they have towards art, all features that they apply in every single one of their titles talks of a company that does more than just games,  they speak directly to the player by infusing him with a rich art-style and narrative not only in motion by words, but with music and scenarios carefully created, that says as much of the world that we are playing in as one of J. R. R. Tolkien books. The game-play facilitates all this features and implements element from classic sensitivities of gaming that few major studios dare to keep alive.

By taking a brief look at this studio’s work, when people ask me if I see games as art, I really have no doubts when I answer yes, perhaps you will too, after appreciating the same things as did, answer in the same fashion; and while may not be relevant to some, it still is an interesting -GAMING TOPIC- to take on… Thank you for being awesome.