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Juan Fandiño is the creative director at Maboroshi Artworks and here we discuss his previous, successful 2D game Last Time I Saw You and also about his newly-introduced first-person photography concept with Project Blur.
"Hi friends, I'm at the BCN Game Fest and I'm here joined by Maboroshi.
And guys, last time I saw you, you had an interesting game, which was called Last Time I Saw You.
So, but you now are showing something completely different."
"And there is a lot of interesting talk to be had here.
Let's talk about the previous game first, which was successful.
It released last year, if I'm correct? A year ago?
Exactly one year ago, yesterday."
"So, it was an adventure game with 2D art.
And it was about Japanese culture in the 80s.
Yeah, it was set in the countryside of Japan in the 80s.
And it was like a coming-of-age adventure about a protagonist called Ayumi, figuring out the things of growing up, the problems at home, things with friends, liking someone, being liked by someone, those things."
"All that connected with some magic realism stuff, some Japanese folklore stuff, really focused on Shintoism religion.
And we tried basically to make like a Ghibli movie in a game, somehow.
With a very interesting art style to it."
"It was like a coming-of-age sort of adventure with an art that speaks Japanese, but it's not your typical, right?
Exactly. Well, at the end, it's my own art style.
I have influences both from Japanese artists and non-Japanese artists, but in this one in particular, there was a really big Ghibli influence, for sure, yes."
"And you come from that game, which was successful, and to this game, which is completely different.
It's completely different. At the end, we are jumping into 3D, but of course, we want to make sure that the game still feels like a Maborossi artworks game."
"That's why we are hand-painting the textures, and we are going for an art style in the lines of Spider-Verse or Arkane, but of course, way more humble and way more small, yeah.
Yeah, and it's got some references."
"You guys mentioned Fatal Frame, Project Zero, right?
But I find something very interesting, that it's in first person.
Yes.
So normally, Japanese games wouldn't do that, but you have this approach."
"Yes.
How did you guys decide this, and what do you want to convey with first-person Japanese style horror?
Okay, so, well, the next game uses photography as the main mechanic."
"Before working on games, I studied art and photography.
I went originally to Japan as a photographer, but ended up working on games.
And I always had photography there, like something that I wanted to develop, but I didn't really fully develop, yeah."
"So in this case, I wanted to unify both things, and try to bring the art or the photography I like into a game.
Because the game is focused on photography, for me it felt more natural to just play in first person, since you are going to put the camera in your eyes."
"The transition is seamless.
I've seen recently there are several games with third person, even point down, that you take the camera and then you go into first person, like for example, Toem, which is one of our references."
"But in this case, we wanted to make it more seamless, and also, because we are working with a narrative, we are still making a narrative game, so being yourself inside the eyes of the character, I thought that could enhance easier the fact that you can get into the story easier, basically, yeah."
"Yeah, and it's called Project Blur, I know it's not the final title, but what can you tell me about the main mechanic you mentioned?
Is blur vital to it? Is core to it?
Like, you have to get perfect pictures, you have to get moving pictures, in order to deal with what's going on here?
So actually, I must say that originally I wanted to call the game Blur, but there's already a racing PS3 game called Blur, so I couldn't go in that direction."
"There's a band as well?
Yeah, there's a band as well, of course.
It's called Gorillaz, yeah.
So I kept the codename for that, the title will be different, but no, the game doesn't really, it's not about taking photos and rating them."
"Like for example, in Umurangi Generation, I don't remember if Tony had a rating system, but yeah, it doesn't, yes.
But for example, other games like Umurangi Generation, it kind of gives a rating based on framing and stuff."
"We are not going that way, it's more like an atomic approach, like an NPC tells you, take a photo of this thing, you have to search for that, only that we are having some certain survival horror elements that will annoy you while you are trying to take those photos."
"So yeah, the photos at the end, we want to give the player artistic freedom to frame them as they want.
What you have to take is what the game is telling you to do, but then you are free to take photos of whatever you want, and you have an album where you collect them, you can delete them, you can keep them, and you can do with them what you want."
"So yeah, the game asks you to do certain things, but we encourage the player to explore, do whatever they want, and share those photos with other people.
There are some communities online of people that use the photo mode of several big games, and they make really, really beautiful images."
"And professional photographers that do that.
Of course, we are not a AAA studio by any means, but we are aiming to make a game that is beautiful enough for people to want to take photos inside that game."
"That's very interesting because it shows your photography background.
I know you are in an early stage right now, how deep do you want to go with options for photographers?
As a photographer, I'm a hobbyist photographer as well, so how deep do you want to go with lenses, depth of field, and everything to control exposure, filters?
In that case, we are not going in a very technical direction."
"There was this game called Last Foil, a photography simulator that was released last year.
That's a really interesting game that really lets you modify the camera, the lens, everything."
"We are not doing that.
We are going for a more direct approach, like TOEM, let's say.
You can aim, you can focus, but you cannot really change those things.
You will have algorithms in the camera."
"For example, the flash will be an algorithm.
So there will be a moment that if you want, you can take photos with flash, you will have different filters.
But let's say that we are not trying to do a photography simulation."
"It's just like you have the camera, you interact with the world and the characters with this camera, but it's not like a photography game for people who want to experiment with those numbers and settings and such."
"When can we expect to learn more about the game?
The final announcement with proper title and get our hands on it.
So I'm aiming to announce it properly by the end of this year with a trailer."
"I don't know if a demo will come at that time or will be later, but it should be out at some point.
Definitely not this year, but next year or the following one.
We are aiming for that."
"We are not expecting to take that much yet.
Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. Enjoy the show.
Looking forward to learning more to the end of the year.
Thank you."
