Drops of Gold and Scarlet: Chasing the rain with Kornodd

Ding ding ding ding . I stand at the level crossing waiting for the train to pass, the rain cascading of my scarlet umbrella and falling onto the grey bitumen. Through the flashing windows of the train I see Kornodd (@kornod1), creator of Rainchaser. Perhaps once the boom gates rise they will have the chance to pause beside the tracks and answer some of my questions... [Dinging stops]

What was your starting point for Rainchaser? What was the spark that led to the burst of red crystals and twisted metal? 

Well, I wanted to make some kind of game for a long time, but that was always just a vague idea. Then I played ZeroRanger in 2021 and knew that it had to be a shoot’em up. Then I mulled over that for a couple more years, and now we are here. 

Is this your first shmup or something you’ve tried or wanted to do for a while? Any particular genre faves that define your shmup story (whether or not they are specifically influences for Rainchaser)?

Before that there was also a short period of playing Touhou, which got me familiarised with a lot of concepts present in the genre, but I didn’t delve too deep into other games before 2021. It’s my first attempt at making a game, so I had to go through a few basic prototypes just to get a feel for things and understand what goes into making a shoot’em up (although this is still kind of an ongoing process). 

One of the things that hits first as distinct is the palette and the overall aesthetic (anime diesel punk?) I can perceive a bit of a green/orange from Zero Ranger here, but can you tell us a bit more about where this visual style comes from? What was it like to get this working in a genre that commonly uses its neon pink/green colours for the necessity of visibility?

Yeah, as I mentioned, ZeroRanger was kind of a turning point, and my main source of inspiration(which I guess is pretty apparent). It’s truly an outstanding game within a genre and I would like to see more things grow and learn from it. In terms of visual style though I leaned into games like Battle Garegga, Dodonpachi DoJ, different Psikyo games like the first Gunbird and also Treasure games like Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun. Also a lot of my style as an artist was inspired by Yoshitoshi Abe, so there’s some Texhnolyze, Haibane Renmei and Lain in there as well. There are quite a lot of other sources of inspiration besides that, but if I keep on going this list will get way too long. And as for the palette there was a lot of struggle(and still is!) with making the visibility work. One the major factors that I had to constantly account for is the proper contrast hierarchy between different gameplay elements, but thankfully, as long as I do that part properly, I get to keep the gold and silver for bullets ^ ^ That duo was actually inspired by “Mercury Poison” spellcard from EoSD, it’s quite a striking pattern. 

Storytelling/narrative is clearly something that you are trying to inject here, through the cutscenes, dialogue and a variety of other features (the ‘Breakroom’ is fascinating). Could you tell us more about your interests here (considering this genre that tends to not spend a huge amount of time on typical narrative)?

Besides shoot’em ups, I’m also a big fan of adventure games like Ace Attorney, Hotel Dusk, Layton games, Flower Sun and Rain, etc. So I feel somewhat compelled to get some of that into the game, while still trying to make it suitable for the genre and not to cause any issues to the overall pacing of the game. A lot of that is still in the works, so I guess this is all I can tell at this point. 

The pixel art and animation for Rainchaser is gorgeous. Do you have any particular gen or hardware that you are emulating with this element? What impact does this have on what you decide to do on screen? First of all, I’m happy that people love pixel art of the game! I wasn’t used to working with sprites and pixel art in general, so that took a while getting used to. It requires a bit of a different skill set compared to illustrations that I usually make. I don’t really have a particular gen I’m trying to emulate, but classic Raizing games are probably the golden standard for me, games like Battle Garegga and Batrider are just incredible with how much detail and variety there is in all the environments of different stages, and enemy sprites are on the same quality level(especially mech bosses in Batrider!). In general I’m going for that kind of look, without thinking too much about technical stuff.  

I’m fascinated to know - how do you go about creating an enemy for this world you have marked out (mech empire punk plus shoujo witches)? Is there a particular process to make sure it fits in the universe, communicates and has its own unique character? I think the main balance there is to have a unique and distinct look for each enemy, but to keep the general forms they have consistent. My favorite examples of this are enemies in Ikaruga - they are quite varied, but all of them have kind of a spherical form in their foundation. Or enemies in DoDoDonpachi, they often have sharp, sort of rectangular forms. I tried to get the feel of forms that I would like to have for my enemies, and I try to stick to it. Also I think I should mention Cho Ren Sha 68k, which has stellar enemy design, both visually and mechanically(having opening up animations and such makes enemies in that game look much more dynamic and visually interesting), the look of those enemies also was a big inspiration for me. 

Rainchaiser and the imagery within seems to resonate with the anime media mix in a way that connects to imagery even if not intended (I can’t help but see Lain in the powerlines, Sin and Punishment in the alarm clock, every anime where people are waiting at a level train crossing). To what extent is this something you are actively linking or responding to? Are there particular media objects from this space that define what you do and what you want to create? I try to get inspiration from things other than games as well, so I guess you can call that intentional. A lot of that is informed by mainly anime from early 00s, I find that period the most interesting and experimental. Multiple works involving Yoshitoshi Abe as I mentioned, Kino’s Journey and various works by Kunihiko Ikuhara. I would like to create something that would have the same feel to it. 

The weapons swapping mechanics seem to follow in the trails of Zero Ranger, but the light/heavy variation seems like a real innovation to this. Were there other games or ideas that fed into this particular implementation? I think Radiant Silvergun is somewhat close to this, since it also combines different types of fire to form various weapons, although without a change in ship speed, and Alltynex Second also seems to have a similar combinatory system, although I still have to play more of it to be really familiar with how it works. I’m happy with how the moveset of the SUN ship turned out for the demo, but I would like to differentiate various weapon roles even more moving forward.

Could you tell us a bit about your music collaboration? How are you deciding on the aural landscape for this world? I’ve been a long time friend with Ime44, which is a composer who is collaborating with me on this, and I would say that the way how stage 1 theme turned out dictated how the rest of the game sounds a lot. References for the general sound initially included a lot of tracks from Umineko, Ketsui, DoJ and Revolutionary Girl Utena (the movie OST in particular). Can’t really express how happy I am with how the soundtrack so far has turned out. 

What would you say is the most ‘ah ha’ moment that you have had in relation to shmup design? What thoughts and ideas would you pass on to other prospective designers based on what you have discovered? I guess the main thing for me was to keep the stage design kind of segmented, and to have a general idea for each section. Initially I tried to have more of a Cave stage design, with less of a distinction between different parts of the stage and more focus on general feeling of flow, but I couldn’t get that quite right. Changing the general mindset helped me a lot in putting the stage together. I also find that introducing a lot of dynamic elements, like some random variation to certain attacks, rank, and caravan waves of enemies makes the stage more fun to replay. Also if we are talking about prospective designers for shoot’em ups or games in general, I can’t recommend Bog Hog’s Shmup Workshop series enough. There’s nothing as condensed and filled with excellent practical advice on action game design as that series. I watched it a lot of times by this point, and it has been immensely helpful throughout development. 

How can the shmup community help? - What would be the best thing for anyone with an interest in the game to do? What would do the most for you? Seeing people enjoying the demo and having fun with it is plenty! If you have any feedback on the demo I would also be glad to hear it, either through twitter or discord (I have the same nickname there).

Anything else you would like to tell us?

Play more shmups! There’s always some cool obscure game waiting to be found.

Oh, also I forgot to talk about bullet patterns I guess ^ ^;

In general style I'm mostly inspired that lies between oldschool shmups and Cave danmaku, so stuff like Zero Ranger, ChoRenSha68k, Eschatos, Kamui and Sorcer Striker. But there are also some leanings into a more danmaku style at points, which were mostly inspired by Ketsui and Blue Revolver.

Thanks so much Kornodd for taking the time to talk to us. Now we all need to go an play the Rainchaser demo a few more times. We'll see if we can find anything else to tell you apart from that it's great.

_DYR