Loco Roco - Development

Development

LocoRoco was envisioned by Tsutomu Kouno, who had previously work on development of Ico. While on a train during the second quarter of 2004, Kouno had used a PDA to sketch a game that would involve multiple similar characters that would not be in direct control of the player. He realized the planet-tilting aspect after seeing how rotating the phone with the sketch around would lead to a compelling game. At that time, the PlayStation Portable was nearing release, and Kouno felt the unit's shoulder buttons would be appropriate for the tilting controls. Kouno also opted to develop for the PSP to break the mold of other, more complicated sequels from PlayStation 2 games that were being developed for the unit and instead create something that "really seemed at home on the PSP". Kouno also wanted "every aspect of the game to be unique", and led to his choices for graphics and music in the game.

Three concepts were part of Kouno's vision for the game, "easy to play, fun and to have dramatic visuals". Kouno sought not only to make the game accessible to younger players, but also to a wider, international audience. While his team experimented with different control schemes for the game, they recognized that the simple tilting controls would be easily learned by children as well as those outside of Japan. This approach also led to the use of a new "language" for the music, instead of relying on Japanese works which would not be understood by the international audience. However, despite the simple controls, Kouno noted they included deep gameplay around those that would require players to master to gain all the collectibles in the game.

Kouno opted to keep the game in 2D instead of the more popular 3D to maintain the simplicity of the game. The Loco Roco team had experimented with different designs for the characters and world, including claymation, papercraft, and detailed textures, but settled on the resulting patterns not only to convey a "bright, cheerful" world, but as well as to keep budget costs down, no longer having a need to seek artists for textures. Kouno drew upon his interest in the natural world to design the other characters in the game; for example, one character was based on the appearance of his pet tropical fish. Kouno found that using 2D graphics allowed him to constantly present the faces of the LocoRoco and other beings within the game, and used that to convey a constant sense of emotion from all the characters. Maya was used to construct the levels and place hazards and obstacles. The graphics themselves were based on using and animating Bezier curves, a feature of the PSP's software capabilities.

Kouno had attempted to present the idea at pitch meetings twice in the early part of 2005 but was turned away. While management was able to understand the mechanic of tilting the world, they could not understand Kouno's vision of applying artificial intelligence to the LocoRoco or other creatures in the game. On the second rejection, the management staff suggested that Kouno return with something more concrete to explain his ideas. Kouno spent one month with a four-person team to create a simple pre-prototype version of the game that demonstrated the rolling gameplay aspect. The pre-prototype version was well received, and Kouno was given further resources to develop the full game. A complete prototype was created by an eight-person team over three months to establish the rest of the game's core mechanics, including the joining and splitting of the Loco Roco and the dynamic music. The remainder of the game was completed in the following 11 months by the full 16-person staff at Sony Computer Entertainment Japan.