Sushi Ben VR is the tastiest videogame you'll play

Looking for an educational, entertaining VR gaming experience? IndieBloom are ready to serve you a fresh, delicious serving called Sushi Ben VR.

Ready, steady, cook!

Sushi Ben VR (tentative title) is a slice of life anime sim where you play as a customer to a sushi bar that's fallen on hard times. Loosely based on the life of the creator's friend, who he used to work with at a sushi bar.

The game is all about making friends with the town's inhabitants in order to experience various narrative encounters. These events are based on the player's interactions with the diverse cast of NPCs or just being at the right place at the right time. 

The recipe for Sushi Ben VR started around 2016/2017, with around 20 people at one point all over the globe working on it (college students with each person contributing a small amount). Most of the game's animations were made over 3 years ago by first year animation students. The main ingredient and person involved in all of this, is the building modeler Dmaw, who was generous enough to answer some questions for IndieBloom during their very busy schedule. Working on concepts for the game, but back then having no idea how to 3D model well, or do anything related to game design, Dmaw further explains building their skills,

So while in college I slowly started learning all the skill sets I would need to make a few proof of concepts for the game. Eventually I turned the project into my thesis for my MFA at the College of Art and Design. After I graduated last year I took a few months off, then I started trying to make it a full game, because before I had really only focused on the idea of using 3D manga panels to enhance VR narrative design.

Currently there are 6 people that make up Team Sushi Ben, all located in various states in the US, cooking on this game to make it the best it can be.

Dmaw has been 3D modeling seriously for about 4 years while they first started dabbling in 3D modeling about 8 years ago. The idea came about for a VR (virtual reality) game halfway through their Masters degree in 2D animation.

Apart from video games and the experience of working at a sushi bar, the massive influences also stemmed from anime. Titles such as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Kill La Kill, while the 3D manga panel idea was mostly inspired by Samurai Jack, Dmaw's favourite cartoon growing up. 'Its use of comic panels during fight scenes has stuck with me throughout my adulthood.'

What's on the menu?

VR in videogames and mobile gaming has yet to take off in a popular way, where it was touted for a while as the next big thing in gaming. This is down to several factors such as price, accessibility in consumers homes and virtual reality sickness. Dmaw provides some further reasons.

I think VR gaming is obviously the future of gaming, but it has a long way to go before it becomes considered the default way to play games. I think it has a lot of issues, at the moment especially with VR narratives which I'm hoping to offer a unique solution to some of those issues. Things like the player looking at the wrong place at the wrong time, or them not standing in a spot that gives them a great view of the action that's happening on screen. Also I find the lack of the ability to use film language really hurts VR experiences, as the player often feels like they are observing a play if they aren't being directly involved in what's happening in the game. Which if you ask me is a step backwards in how far we've come in visual storytelling. Not being able to use extreme close ups and insert shots really makes VR at times feel less interesting than just watching a film on the TV. With my panels you get all of the traditional film language that we know and love but it's presented in a new and interesting way in VR that also helps the player see things they might miss if they were looking the wrong way.

One other thing about VR gaming that Dmaw hopes to improve on is the type of games that are available. 'Heavily narrative based games like mine are almost nonexistent when compared to the endless amount of shooters and mini games. If VR ever wants to grow we need to diversify the type of experiences we are offering, as not everyone is into action heavy games.' As they say, ‘variety is the spice of life’. 'Personally I'm making this game because it's the type of game I want to play in VR but it does not exist yet, it's sort of a cross between Animal Crossing and the Yakuza series.'

With all this being said, the plans for now are currently for Sushi Ben VR to be on PC. Dmaw says,

I'd like this game to be something that brings more people into VR, so I'm not planning on a console version of the game until at least half a year after release. (This could change depending on what my publisher will want, if I even get a publisher that is.) At first I didn't think people would want to play my game if it wasn't in VR but I've gotten quite a few requests for a console version. As for PSVR it's one of the main platforms I'll be developing for as I think my game will have a large audience on that device.

We can definitely see more people being interested and wanting to play the game. On as many consoles/devices as possible.

Rice n shine

If you didn’t know already, making videogames brings many challenges, especially if you’re an indie. For Dmaw creating Sushi Ben VR, the most challenging thing for them has been how to figure out the best way to make and use the 3D manga panels. As they use Unreal Engine, ‘I won’t go into the technical details but at least 70% of my efforts on the project have been trying to figure out how exactly one makes a 3D manga panel using shaders in Unreal.’ They’ve been glad that they finally solved that issue with the help of some super smart people 🤓👍

Through all this hard work and persistence, it pleases Dmaw seeing people's reactions to the game's concepts. 'I've received lots of praise from my peers and people that I look up to. I've been tweeting into the void for years and it's nice to finally have my efforts noticed.'

While the satisfaction from it all is 'Just being able to make what I want without having to work for someone else and then I also really enjoy reading people's reactions to my game. It makes me happy to see people interested in something I've made.'

Curious also to know a working day for an indie creator?

A typical work day for me is a few meetings scattered throughout the day with various crew members, giving feedback on their work, or assigning them something new to do. For the rest of the time I'm either researching something, modeling, or making content for social media. Which is a huge part of my day, and has proven to be quite worthwhile. For one of my viral tweets I spent at least 2 hours just picking the right song to use, which I'm not sure had any impact on the tweets overall success but who knows, I'm just glad it worked. Recently my work days while trying to wrap up the tech demo have consisted of my lead programmer and I sitting in Discord together while he works so he can rubber duck ideas off me, and I'll often offer suggestions on how to solve something when we run into a technical issue. Sort of a two heads are better than one situation.

Dmaw recommends on having strong social media game 💪 'Literally a single tweet has changed my life completely.' Did you catch the viral tweet?

COVID is still impacting peoples lives in many different ways. Though for Dmaw it's been 'COVID has had almost 0 impact on me as I rarely leave the house anyways (My production team has always been remote with no plans on doing a traditional brick and mortar studio any time soon), the only thing that's been hard for me is that I can't go eat sushi at the sushi bar I used to work at'. We're definitely getting a craving for sushi right now 🍣

Dmaw's advice on making a game?

Go with your gut instinct and don't rely on others to do things you are capable of learning or doing yourself. Back when I was new to Unreal and game dev, I had a basic idea of how I should have created the 3D manga panels, but I let others tell me it's not possible or they suggested I do it another way, which wound up being a terrible idea and I was right to begin with. Wasted a good year on an older method that wound up not being practical or performant. Back in college I thought it was cool to have a large development team, but that led to me doing more work than needed, trying to manage them when I could have just done the work myself.

Some valuable gold there.

While recently finishing the tech demo for Sushi Ben VR, next sees Dmaw and the team,

Shopping it around a few publishers who have expressed interest in funding the game. So if one of those deals goes through then we will begin production on a full game, if not then we'll try to do a Kickstarter campaign and go from there. The future of the project is looking bright though and I can't wait forever to get to try the tech demo and the eventual full game.

Bright indeed 🌟🌞💡

Does this build up your appetite for VR gaming or sushi? Never tried a VR game but are keen to give one a go? Here at IndieBloom we are very excited to present to you Sushi Ben VR, that’s unique and pushing the envelope in gaming and storytelling. Check it out and play on PC on the itch.io page, while following the development and progress on Twitter and Dmaw's personal Twitter page.