‘He’s tiny, dumpy and funny – so his BMX tricks are hilarious’: Tanuki: Pon’s Summer, an adorable slice-of-life adventure
A freeloading tanuki, mounting debt, and a town full of possibilities will sound familiar to fans of Animal Crossing. Alas, while you won’t find accountability from Tom Nook, Kyoto-based studio Denkiworks has stepped in to heal your financial trauma with a BMX-filled adventure in which a mammal finally pays the price for their years of bad behaviour. “Even Japanese people ask why it’s a tanuki,” jokes Liam Edwards, a game designer at Denkiworks. “They have such a mythological background to them; they’re almost like dragons in terms of their mythology.”
In Tanuki: Pon’s Summer, you play as an adorable but irresponsible critter named Pon, who’s bled the coffers of the local shrine – his home – dry by buying video games and snack food instead of preparing for its semicentennial matsuri. As a result, the shrine is in total disrepair, and important architecture and cultural artefacts – such as the ema stand and the chōzuya – are left cracked and broken, unbefitting a festival half a century in the making.
With a forceful push from his ancestor, Pon takes a job at the local post office, delivering parcels on a tiny bike for cash to pay for repairs and buy event finery. “A key aspect of this project is that we check everything,” says Edwards. Although the development team included local Japanese people, Edwards and co were keen to ensure that all cultural details were accurate. “Can we create a shrine or a festival about a tanuki?” Edwards notes. “We did extensive research,” he continues, adding: “We have a whole internal encyclopedia of shrines and related items.”
As a tanuki, your responses are limited to emojis – which Edwards sees as a metaphor for his early years in rural Japan, when he was unable to fully communicate with neighbours. “You can understand what people are saying to you, but the ability and depth of response is stunted,” Edwards says. “The flip side is, it doesn’t stop any character in the game from helping you, and I think that’s true of Japan as well,” he adds. “I’ve always found in my time here that no matter how hard things are and how much you’re struggling, when you try to communicate, people still want to help you.”
While you motor through sunflower fields and suburban streets to complete delivery jobs, townsfolk will prod you to engage with their fixations by completing pint-sized activities. “A bit like a mini Yakuza game, you’re going to get involved,” Edwards says. There are all manner of extracurriculars to try out, from sumo to pulling pints in a local izakaya – modelled after the team’s real Kyoto watering hole – baseball and fishing. “It became a funny joke that every time you deliver a package, there’s going to be an activity there,” Edwards says. “Which was a nightmare for us because we basically developed 20 different mini-games inside of one game.”
At the core of Tanuki: Pon’s Summer is the BMXing, with Edwards citing the likes of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, SSX and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk as inspiration. Using a mixture of button presses and joystick flicks, you can shred down handrails and pull off a surprising number of tricks, from backflips to bunny hops and beyond. “Pon is the vessel through which everything can exist,” says Edwards. “And because he’s tiny, dumpy and he’s funny, the juxtaposition of him doing BMX tricks is just hilarious.”
To pull off this ambitious style, Edwards sought support from Rollerdrome developer Jacob Mills, who helped ensure the world is primed for trick freestylers with responsive physics and plenty of themed stunt obstacles, such as bamboo half-pipes. And while players won’t need to flex intense finger dexterity to progress through the story, Edwards did want to ensure that making your way from point A to B is as fun as possible. “Even if 90% of people don’t know anything about BMXing and they just want to have fun, for that 10% of people who really like BMXing, you don’t want to let them down.”
Read the full story at The Guardian ↗
Denkiworks’ debut lets players pull off tricks and pull pints in a stunning, Japan-inspired setting. A freeloading tanuki, mounting debt, and a town full of possibilities will…
This lens runs the verified story through Cinnamon's AI — wired in the next step.
A freeloading tanuki, mounting debt, and a town full of possibilities will sound familiar to fans of Animal Crossing. Alas, while you won’t find accountability from Tom Nook, Kyoto-based studio Denkiworks has stepped in to heal your financial trauma with a BMX-filled adventure in which a mammal finally pays the price for their years of bad behaviour. “Even Japanese people ask why it’s a tanuki,” jokes Liam Edwards, a game designer at Denkiworks. “They have such a mythological background to them; they’re almost like dragons in terms of their mythology.”
In Tanuki: Pon’s Summer, you play as an adorable but irresponsible critter named Pon, who’s bled the coffers of the local shrine – his home – dry by buying video games and snack food instead of preparing for its semicentennial matsuri. As a result, the shrine is in total disrepair, and important architecture and cultural artefacts – such as the ema stand and the chōzuya – are left cracked and broken, unbefitting a festival half a century in the making.
With a forceful push from his ancestor, Pon takes a job at the local post office, delivering parcels on a tiny bike for cash to pay for repairs and buy event finery. “A key aspect of this project is that we check everything,” says Edwards. Although the development team included local Japanese people, Edwards and co were keen to ensure that all cultural details were accurate. “Can we create a shrine or a festival about a tanuki?” Edwards notes. “We did extensive research,” he continues, adding: “We have a whole internal encyclopedia of shrines and related items.”
As a tanuki, your responses are limited to emojis – which Edwards sees as a metaphor for his early years in rural Japan, when he was unable to fully communicate with neighbours. “You can understand what people are saying to you, but the ability and depth of response is stunted,” Edwards says. “The flip side is, it doesn’t stop any character in the game from helping you, and I think that’s true of Japan as well,” he adds. “I’ve always found in my time here that no matter how hard things are and how much you’re struggling, when you try to communicate, people still want to help you.”
While you motor through sunflower fields and suburban streets to complete delivery jobs, townsfolk will prod you to engage with their fixations by completing pint-sized activities. “A bit like a mini Yakuza game, you’re going to get involved,” Edwards says. There are all manner of extracurriculars to try out, from sumo to pulling pints in a local izakaya – modelled after the team’s real Kyoto watering hole – baseball and fishing. “It became a funny joke that every time you deliver a package, there’s going to be an activity there,” Edwards says. “Which was a nightmare for us because we basically developed 20 different mini-games inside of one game.”
At the core of Tanuki: Pon’s Summer is the BMXing, with Edwards citing the likes of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, SSX and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk as inspiration. Using a mixture of button presses and joystick flicks, you can shred down handrails and pull off a surprising number of tricks, from backflips to bunny hops and beyond. “Pon is the vessel through which everything can exist,” says Edwards. “And because he’s tiny, dumpy and he’s funny, the juxtaposition of him doing BMX tricks is just hilarious.”
To pull off this ambitious style, Edwards sought support from Rollerdrome developer Jacob Mills, who helped ensure the world is primed for trick freestylers with responsive physics and plenty of themed stunt obstacles, such as bamboo half-pipes. And while players won’t need to flex intense finger dexterity to progress through the story, Edwards did want to ensure that making your way from point A to B is as fun as possible. “Even if 90% of people don’t know anything about BMXing and they just want to have fun, for that 10% of people who really like BMXing, you don’t want to let them down.”
Read the full story at The Guardian ↗
A freeloading tanuki, mounting debt, and a town full of possibilities will sound familiar to fans of Animal Crossing. Alas, while you won’t find accountability from Tom Nook, Kyoto-based studio Denkiworks has stepped in to heal your financial trauma with a BMX-filled adventure in which a mammal finally pays the price for their years of bad behaviour. “Even Japanese people ask why it’s a tanuki,” jokes Liam Edwards, a game designer at Denkiworks. “They have such a mythological background to them; they’re almost like dragons in terms of their mythology.”
In Tanuki: Pon’s Summer, you play as an adorable but irresponsible critter named Pon, who’s bled the coffers of the local shrine – his home – dry by buying video games and snack food instead of preparing for its semicentennial matsuri. As a result, the shrine is in total disrepair, and important architecture and cultural artefacts – such as the ema stand and the chōzuya – are left cracked and broken, unbefitting a festival half a century in the making.
With a forceful push from his ancestor, Pon takes a job at the local post office, delivering parcels on a tiny bike for cash to pay for repairs and buy event finery. “A key aspect of this project is that we check everything,” says Edwards. Although the development team included local Japanese people, Edwards and co were keen to ensure that all cultural details were accurate. “Can we create a shrine or a festival about a tanuki?” Edwards notes. “We did extensive research,” he continues, adding: “We have a whole internal encyclopedia of shrines and related items.”
As a tanuki, your responses are limited to emojis – which Edwards sees as a metaphor for his early years in rural Japan, when he was unable to fully communicate with neighbours. “You can understand what people are saying to you, but the ability and depth of response is stunted,” Edwards says. “The flip side is, it doesn’t stop any character in the game from helping you, and I think that’s true of Japan as well,” he adds. “I’ve always found in my time here that no matter how hard things are and how much you’re struggling, when you try to communicate, people still want to help you.”
While you motor through sunflower fields and suburban streets to complete delivery jobs, townsfolk will prod you to engage with their fixations by completing pint-sized activities. “A bit like a mini Yakuza game, you’re going to get involved,” Edwards says. There are all manner of extracurriculars to try out, from sumo to pulling pints in a local izakaya – modelled after the team’s real Kyoto watering hole – baseball and fishing. “It became a funny joke that every time you deliver a package, there’s going to be an activity there,” Edwards says. “Which was a nightmare for us because we basically developed 20 different mini-games inside of one game.”
At the core of Tanuki: Pon’s Summer is the BMXing, with Edwards citing the likes of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, SSX and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk as inspiration. Using a mixture of button presses and joystick flicks, you can shred down handrails and pull off a surprising number of tricks, from backflips to bunny hops and beyond. “Pon is the vessel through which everything can exist,” says Edwards. “And because he’s tiny, dumpy and he’s funny, the juxtaposition of him doing BMX tricks is just hilarious.”
To pull off this ambitious style, Edwards sought support from Rollerdrome developer Jacob Mills, who helped ensure the world is primed for trick freestylers with responsive physics and plenty of themed stunt obstacles, such as bamboo half-pipes. And while players won’t need to flex intense finger dexterity to progress through the story, Edwards did want to ensure that making your way from point A to B is as fun as possible. “Even if 90% of people don’t know anything about BMXing and they just want to have fun, for that 10% of people who really like BMXing, you don’t want to let them down.”
Read the full story at The Guardian ↗
This lens runs the verified story through Cinnamon's AI — wired in the next step.
- Denkiworks’ debut lets players pull off tricks and pull pints in a stunning, Japan-inspired setting.
- A freeloading tanuki, mounting debt, and a town full of possibilities will…