– Goichi “Suda51” Suda remarks on the close ties he feels his games have between narrative and gameplay design.
The games released by Grasshopper Manufacture are known for their strangeness and sometimes violence, but studio head Goicha Suda says story sets the pace for the games he creates.
Speaking to VG247, Suda explained the significance of the recent rerelease of his 1991 game The Silver Case and offered some insight into both his early game design process and how a story-first attitude still drives his development today.
“For me, [story and gameplay] are absolutely one and the same. If you read any of my games like No More Heroes or anything… that story, it writes the gameplay,” said Suda.
He later explains that he didn’t write for two of Grasshopper Manufacture’s more recent games, Let it Die and Lollipop Chainsaw, because creating the gameplay first and writing the story to fit around that felt backward and didn’t work with his process.
“The story ends up being the design document and the framework for the entire game and its gameplay. They’re really one and the same. If somebody came to me and said you had to separate those two things, I don’t think I’d be able to create a game.”
For more from Suda, including his opinion on the evolving Japanese game market and the possibility of a Suda-developed Switch game, check out the full story at VG247.