Game Freak posted their latest videos on the making of Soliti Horse, a 2013 3DS eShop title that combined horse racing with Solitaire. Owing to the fact that there were three core members working on the project, Game Freak has posted the video in three different parts.
In the video, the three core members – Masao Taya, Toshihiro Obata, and composer Go Ichinose, talk about how the project began as a ‘Gear’ project at Game Freak that lets any employee submit game ideas.
Early on, the game went through various iterations, with the artstyle shifting until it took on Obata’s more cutesy, simple artstyle. They showed off one such prototype, where the horse and jockey used pre-rendered 3D graphics instead.
Regarding the music, Ichinose recounts being inspired by Yuji Horii’s Hokkaido Serial Murder Case, and that he wanted to recreate that atmosphere in his music for Soliti Horse, for the text sections of the story.
In the second part, Taya focuses on drawing the horse from the game while answering questions from the other two and the staff. One of the toughest parts of developing this game turned out to be the lack of a proper graphic designer, thanks to human resources being allocated to Pokemon. As such, the game lacked a cohesive artstyle for some time.
As for the final part, it focused on what they would want to improve, and whether the game will ever see a sequel. According to the three, they’d like to make it easier to understand the rules of the game, as well as add real-time versus functionality.
If a sequel were to be made, it might be in 3D instead of 2D graphics, as it’s easier to create that way. That is, if there will be one. Ichinose stated that he would continue wanting to make a sequel along with the other two as long as he still lived, while Taya reiterated that they really wanted to add 8-player real-time versus gameplay into the game. Here and there on Twitter and other places, people have asked whether the game will see a Switch version or smartphone version.
You can check out three videos here below:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
You can check out Game Freak’s previous focus videos on Drill Dozer, HarmoKnight, Pulseman, Quinty, and Tembo the Badass Elephant via the links here.
Soliti Horse is available for Nintendo 3DS via the eShop.
