Farms and Fights: An Interview With Sakuna’s Koichi and Nal At E3 2019

While checking out XSEED’s plethora of titles at E3, I had the chance to interview Director Nal and CG Artist Koichi of Edelweiss– the pair behind Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin.

Spencer: Where did this idea come from? This concept of combining farming with combat?

Nal: For the action parts, I had actually worked on action games before, previously. So I got a lot of inspiration from that for the action combat. For the rice farming content, we had both wanted to do it.

So I heard it was just the two of you developing the whole game. What are some of the unique challenges that have come with that?

Nal: So there are two of us as the core members, but we also have three or four other people as well. I think one of the biggest challenges is because we always strive to hit higher heights in our games and higher quality, the making of Sakuna was a challenge because we wanted to reach an even higher peak. So going forward, we still want to aim for that as well.

Visually, Sakuna looks incredible. Are there any specific visual inspirations behind the game, whether it’s classical art or pop culture, or was it entirely from you guys?

Koichi: So for a lot of the art style, we went back to Murayama-san, who did the character designs, but on our side, we tried to kind of create this Japanese fantasy-style RPG, and we wanted to incorporate styles of Japanese clothes and Japanese styles of fashion and such.

Will: Is there anything in the video game industry that personally inspired you, as a genre or game?

Nal: So my preferred games are more of the older style kind, like SNES sort of games. Devil May Cry definitely as well.

Koichi: I guess, in terms of games, I wouldn’t say I have one big one, but if I really had to say, I’d probably go for Skyrim.

Sakuna has such a unique concept. Did this make it difficult to pitch the game to companies, and has it changed over time because of that? Or were they very open?

Nal: Actually, because of the previous game we had made, Astebreed, we were approached by Marvelous, who asked us “Hey, would you like to make a game together?”. So we were working together with them from quite a while back.

We want to thank Nal and Koichi for taking the time to speak with us about Sakuna. Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin is set to release for the PS4 and Nintendo Switch this Winter.