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EXCLUSIVE DIRECTOR INTERVIEW

Original interview conducted in Japanese by Game*Spark News

Click here to read the original interview (日本語)

Interviewer & Author: Takamura Hibiki
December 8th 2024
(Half Machine-Translated, Half Edited)

Section 1: "Shujinkou" is not a language learning tool but a "game"... If there is no new "Etrian Odyssey", "then I'll make it myself!"
Section 2: "Memories of my late mother" and thoughts on "Shujinkou"

"Shujinkou" is not a language learning tool but a "game"... If there is no new "Etrian Odyssey", "then I'll make it myself!"

A new 3D dungeon RPG, "Shujinkou," is scheduled to be released on PS4, PS5, and PC (Steam) in February 2025. This game is created by indie developer Rice Games, and includes elements of Japanese language learning, allowing players to "enjoy DRPGs while learning Japanese."

In this article, we bring you an interview with Julian Rice, the representative of Rice Games and the creator of "Shujinkou." Julian was born to a Taiwanese mother and an American father, and is an indie game developer who has admired "JRPGs" since childhood.

The demo version of "Shujinkou" does not support Japanese, but they are considering supporting Japanese by the end of 2025. In this interview, we asked about the "loss of his mother" that he experienced during the development period, and the systems behind this creative work, which is "not a learning tool but a 'game'."

Due to its focus on "learning Japanese," from a Japanese perspective, it's likely that the work will leave you with the impression that "this will increase the number of Japanese speakers!" However, if you're at all interested in the content, such as how fun the game is or what challenging events Julian faced, then why not check out "Shujinkou."


--First, please introduce yourself. Please tell us about your experience in game production and your relationship with Japan and Rice Games.

Julian Rice (hereafter referred to as Julian): Nice to meet you. My name is Julian Rice. I'm 26 years old and half Taiwanese and half American. I was born in Taipei, but moved to the US soon after. After that, I moved to Hong Kong and Taiwan for family reasons.

I started studying Japanese when I was a high school student in Taiwan. I started studying Japanese while taking classes at an American school in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, during middle and high school. First, I practiced writing hiragana such as "aiueo", and from there I learned while having trouble with the kunyomi and onyomi readings of kanji.

After graduating from high school, I went to the US and majored in "Linguistics & Computer Science", a special major that combines both fields, at a university in California (UCLA), and studied Japanese as a second major. I studied entrepreneurship as a minor, and that's when I decided to start Rice Games. I've wanted to make games since I was about 10 years old.

Originally, when I was about 3 years old, my father gave me a Dreamcast controller, and I was absorbed in racing games without knowing anything, so I was longing for the world of games. From an early age, I was determined to make a game!

My favorite game is Paper Mario RPG for the GameCube. In high school, I was hooked on Atlus works, and I was absorbed in Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Giant God, Shin Megami Tensei IV, Persona 4 The Golden, and outside of Atlas works, Rune Factory 4. They were all numbered "4", so to me they were the "BIG 4"! I was fascinated by the world of JRPGs and wanted to make a JRPG with my own hands.

But I had never written a proper code until I entered university. In high school, I would watch videos, copy and paste code, and tweak numbers, but in university, I felt I had to catch up with other students, so I made very simple games with no graphics at all.

I made a simple "rock-paper-scissors-style gambling game" for multiplayer and showed it to my friends in the dorm. They enjoyed it and I learned the fun of making games. When we were all drinking and drinking juice and talking about "Let's play another game that Julian made," I realized that I had "entered the world of game development."

Then, when I was in my third year of university, the idea for "Shujinkou" finally came to me.

I was double majoring in Computer Science and Japanese, loved Japanese language and culture, and I was also minoring in entrepreneurship, so I thought I could create a work that combined complex worlds, characters, music, and graphics, like my favorite companies, Atlus and Square Enix.

Of course, I had no money or skills at the time. I had almost no skills to realize my dream, and I was worried about what to do. Unlike now, I couldn't speak much Japanese. I learned various languages ​​while interacting with Japanese friends, and worked to realize my dream of "Shujinkou."

In the center is "Shu (Lord)", on the left is "Jin (Person)", and on the right is "Kou (Public)".

The word "Shujinkou" can be divided into the kanji characters "主", "人", and "公". Each of these kanji has its own meaning, so I thought, "Maybe I can create an adventure story of these three people" by applying them to the characters. (Note: There are three characters in "Shujinkou": "主", "人", and "公"). In this way, I used the meanings of the kanji as a source of inspiration to create more than 30 main characters.

--As someone who was born and raised in Japan, I had never thought of breaking down the word "protagonist" character by character, so it feels like a fresh source of inspiration.

Julian: I think one of the benefits of this work is that it allows you to focus on things that are difficult to notice if you are born and raised in a Japanese-speaking country. I think there are probably similar things for words other than protagonist. In English, some people write the "公" in "protagonist" as "Ko", but for learners, the "u" is necessary. If it's "Shujinko" and not "Shujinko", you won't be able to grasp the correct pronunciation, including the kanji "公".

--Indeed, for example, "Tokyo" is not pronounced "TOKYO" but "TOUKYOU". This may be unhelpful for people who are learning Japanese.

Julian: People are just going to have to remember those things regardless of the kanji. Indeed, when you do look at the English spelling, you see that it's written as "TOKYO" and not "Tokyo (TOUKYOU)".

From that idea, I started creating the world of Shujinkou in 2018 and exhibited it at the Tokyo Game Show in 2019, but looking back now, the finished product in 2019 seems like a game made by a baby.

--Was it so long between the release of the Steam store page and the release of the demo because you wanted to expand the content?

Julian: Yes. It almost feels like a full remake. The first thing I exhibited was a traditional 2D action game where you fly, run, and attack. There are a lot of game creation tutorial videos for beginners on YouTube, so I copied them.

For example, in terms of sound, I hired a composer to create assets that would help me shape my image. But it was still difficult to create, and I felt like it would be a game that I personally wouldn't get into. So I went back to the basics and thought I'd make a work inspired by Etrian Odyssey, and other games I loved playing when I was a child.

After all, Atlus hasn't released any new numbered Etrian Odyssey titles at all... I was really stuck, so I said, "Well, I'll just make it myself!" (laughs)

The artists we hired in Germany and the US liked games, but had never played Etrian Odyssey. So we bought the game for them and had them play it, and told them, "This is what I want to do! I want to make a game in the DRPG genre!" Of course, we didn't want to do it the easy way, so we spent 4-5 years thinking up all the functions from scratch, incorporating language learning elements and mini-games into the DRPG.

Etrian Odyssey is my favorite game, but the target audience is quite hardcore gamers. Beginners might have the experience of "I was suddenly killed by a bear, what's going on?!" So I designed Shujinkou so that even people who don't usually play DRPGs can enjoy it.

Our theme is to make it a "simple but complex work" so that anyone can play it.

--The currently released demo version of Shujinkou doesn't have Japanese language. Are there plans to implement Japanese in the future?

Julian: By late 2025, we would like to have Chinese and Spanish as well as Japanese.

--I'm really looking forward to it!

Julian: Shujinkou has a very long and complex storyline, and can be played for 80 hours. If you include side content and other things, you can easily play for 150 to 200 hours. It also has over 1.5 million words, so it would cost a lot of money to localize it (laughs).

--Since Japanese gamers may be able to play it someday, please tell us about the game content of Shujinkou.

Julian: I want to emphasize that Shujinkou is a game. It is not a Japanese language learning tool, although we are still struggling a bit with the marketing.

It has a solid story and system like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, and of course there are plot developments such as betrayal and evil deeds, but you can also make friends with someone and even develop romantic relationships. This game has all of those game elements.

This game is a video game, but it also has elements that allow you to learn Japanese. Of course, I think it will be very useful for people who do not understand Japanese or who want to start learning, but I personally don't want to make a game that I cannot enjoy.

Therefore, I designed it so that people who are fluent in Japanese or whose first language is Japanese can enjoy it. I would like to appeal to the fact that it is an RPG as a premise, and that you can learn Japanese as an added value.

The game system is an RPG, and it has a unique system where you use orbs containing hiragana, katakana, and kanji for skills, and use them to guess the enemy's name. For example, if there is an enemy named "Bone? (Bone Woman)," you can figure out the enemy's name is "Bone Woman" (Hona Onna, romaji) through battle, then use the "Bone" ball and the "Woman" ball to attack the enemy's weakness.

Of course, it also has RPG-like elemental elements such as fire and water. This is likened to the "days of the week," so if you fight on "Wednesday," your "water elemental element will become stronger." The combat elements become more complex as the game progresses.

  • TRANSLATION NOTE: "Wednesday" in Japanese uses the kanji for "Water," hence the connection between strengthened elemental moves in Japanese. Another example is that "Tuesday" uses the kanji for "Fire" — Shujinkou has 7 elements in the game (each corresponding to a day of the week)

--I've heard that even on a global scale, Japanese is a difficult language to learn and read, with a mixture of kanji, hiragana, and katakana. With this in mind, what were some of the challenges you faced in creating the game?

Julian: Let me emphasize once again that I have been studying Japanese from scratch. Therefore, I have designed the game based on my understanding of what is difficult about Japanese from my own experience of struggling with it. For example, even just "ikimasu" (I will go) has many variations such as "I will go", "I can go", "I won't go", "I can go", "Let's go", "Let's go?"... I definitely can't remember this even if I study. I felt that it might not be good to adopt such things in the battle system (laughs).

That's how I created the "mini-game to guess Japanese concepts". I'm the type of gamer who enjoys bonding in-game with ladies, so I made it so that you can get along with various characters. Of course, there are handsome guys, so anyone can enjoy it!

There is also a mini-game related to kanji radicals. I made a mini-game based on a concept that I felt "wouldn't be able to get better at Japanese if I didn't study this" so that it would not interfere with the core functions of the game.

People who want to make a language learning game tend to give up because they think that if they try to put all the functions into the same system, they will end up making a game that is too complicated. But with Shujinkou, we made the most important parts the core of the gameplay, and other important parts are complemented by mini-games.

Even people who are not interested in learning Japanese can enjoy playing the game, thinking, "This character is cute, and she looks good in her swimsuit," or "The music is really good."

--By the way, do you live in Japan, Julian?

Julian: I currently live in Shibuya. Actually, I have another job, so I try to live at the same station as my company. My company happened to be in Shibuya, and it was a coincidence that it was a city I really liked, so I was happy. I often walk down Dogenzaka and drop in for a drink.

--Please tell us more about the response (to Shujinkou) outside of Japan.

Julian: In June, we selected about 20 players and did a closed beta test. All of the players are from overseas, but those who were motivated to learn Japanese made steady progress in their studies by doing things like "looking at the signs in the labyrinth in the game and taking notes on how to write them and the order in which to write them."

We also received comments from people who love games saying, "Unlike other games, this game lets you actually learn skills that you can use in the real world, which really motivates me." We're grateful to have received mostly positive feedback!

--It's a bit early to ask, but could you tell us about any games you'd like to make in the future and your vision for Rice Games?

Julian: Yes. I had a vision for this game six years ago, and I also have a vision for six years from now. The setting of the first nation, Genya, is an inspired mix between Japan and Taiwan, two places dear to my heart, but a shocking development awaits you in the story after about 30 to 40 hours of play. You go to the second country there... and at the end of that, a third country is hinted at.

Actually, the development of the next game is about 50% complete. However, since it took six years of development and the company has been self-funded, I'm going to stop here for now. So I'm planning on "Shujinkou 2," which will take me to the third and fourth nations.

I've already written over 500 pages of the story, so we're almost ready to proced with subsequent development, and some of the characters who appear in this upcoming release are from the fifth and sixth nations. Ultimately, I'm hoping to implement a function to carry over save data from the previous game, making it a trilogy.

Each country you visit has its own story, so at the end of each story, there will be a reason to go to another country. They're all connected, anyway. If this first game performs well, I'm thinking of immediately continuing development.


"Memories of my late mother" and thoughts on "Shujinkou"

Julian: "Shujinkou" is filled with strong feelings, including private matters.

I was born to a white father and a Taiwanese mother. I lived in Taiwan with my beloved younger sister and brother, but after graduating from high school, I moved to the United States alone and started attending an American university.

One day, my father called me and told me that my mother had cancer. At first, I didn't understand what he was saying and couldn't believe it. It was on the more serious side of cancer, stage 3 or 4 colon cancer. It was already too late. My mother was still young, around 46 or 47 years old. I heard that most people reach this stage at 60 or older, so it was too early.

I remember feeling despair and the pain of taking a shower that day. I also hated not being able to go back to my parents' home in Taiwan from the United States. It was painful to watch my mother start medication and lose her hair through the phone screen.

I wanted to release "Shujinkou" before my mother passes away, and I wanted to show her that she's raised a successful son.

In Taiwanese culture, being the eldest son carries a very important meaning. Of course, all children are cherished, but I worked really hard from 2018 to 2020 because I wanted to show my Taiwanese mother what I can do as the eldest son.

So I worked hard, working part-time to hire people, in order to exhibit at Tokyo Game Show 2019. Finally, I exhibited at the Tokyo Game Show and shared my vision in English, Chinese, and Japanese with attendees from America, China, Europe, Japan, and more. I didn't mention my mother, though. Although I lacked skills, my mother was satisfied and posted on Facebook, "Look at what my son is doing!" However, her health gradually worsened.

She was relatively healthy until I graduated from university, so I took a lot of photos for graduation (there was no ceremony due to COVID19) and sent them to her. When I told my mother, "I studied two majors and even completed a minor, so in a way, I graduated 2.5 times... and in just 3.5 years!" she was very happy.

After that, my father and siblings went to the United States at the end of 2019. However, medical expenses are high in the United States, so my mother stayed behind, and I returned to Taiwan just after graduating, and we lived together—just the two of us—for five months. It was a very precious time. Of course, I was still working on "Shujinkou" and my full time software engineering job during that time, and I worked on it until 3 or 4 AM every day.

I have to finish it by the day my mother dies, or so I thought. But the designs aren't done, and there's still so much programming to do, so I wondered, "Can I really make such a large-volume game?" I was also managing remotely and paying the salaries of about 20 teammates (part-time), so I wondered if I could do it all with the funds I had earned and saved... but I didn't give up and persevered.

I took care of my mother and went to the hospital once every two weeks. Even at the hospital, where I was talking to the cancer treatment oncologist and discussing the results of the tests, I continued to draw the labyrinth maps. Like, this path should be passed like this, or where to place the boss. Of course, what I drew on paper needs to be digitized, but I kept thinking about how to design it, and designed close to 50 floors or areas for this upcoming release.

My mother would often say, "You're drawing again," —we had a good time together. At night, we watched TV together, and when she went to bed, I went back to the office and continued drawing the maps by myself.

Eventually, my mother's condition worsened, and she could only be treated in the United States. It was an international move. At that time, my mother was in a wheelchair, so my father quickly prepared the plane and the house for her. The five of us did our best to get by. However, her health had deteriorated significantly a month and a half before she passed away.

Sadly, the game wasn't completed in time. She did manage to wear our Rice Games T-shirt, but she joked that it was bad luck because it was a black T-shirt (in Taiwanese folklore).

When she passed away, I thought it wasn't real. I felt that the world was unequal and unfair. I still think it is to a degree. I heard my father howl in a way I've never heard, and it's always stuck in my mind— I also saw my mother being put into a car in a white cloth.

For some reason, I couldn't cry. I've only cried twice since she passed away, the first time being that night. The second time was when my father took out some old photos of me being raised throughout the years.

People with stage 3-4 colon cancer die within an average of six months. I have nothing but respect for my mother for working hard for two or three years. I think the third time I cry will be during shower time after the success of Shujinkou. But my mother is no longer here. I can only hope that she is watching over me from somewhere.

I moved to Japan after that. Immediately after we moved, I went through a period of being very irritable. It wasn't anger directed at other people, but I'd walk around Shibuya on my way to and from work, find jewelry that my mother would like, look around Parco and Hikarie (shopping malls), and experience all sorts of cool things, but the situation of "not being able to talk to my mother about it" became a huge mental burden.

When we lived together in Taiwan, we'd walk through those kinds of places together and often talk. But we couldn't share anything anymore. We couldn't share the various joys we had. But I didn't give up, and I created "Shujinkou" in parallel with my main job. Even now, being able to tell my mother (up in heaven) that I'm developing a game is still a source of motivation for me.

--There are truly feelings put into "Shujinkou" that cannot be explained in simple words.

Julian: As you can see in the demo, I wrote a message to my mother at the beginning, and another message is included in the credits. This is allowed because Shujinkou has not received any outside investment.

Shujinkou was created from scratch, with the necessary personnel hired and managed, and the development funds earned by myself. I am aware that it is not a perfect work, and in fact I am still in the process of fixing bugs.

I am currently planning on quitting where I currently work and create a subsidiary of Rice Games in Japan, and I plan to notify my intention to quit within the next few days (at the time of writing, the resignation has been decided/confirmed to take place end of 2024). Next year (2025), I would like to rent an office for Rice Games in Japan, and I would like to have more Japanese team members join us. If we have the money, I would like to add well-known creators. Many of the people I admire are in the Japanese game industry, so this is my chance. It really is just the beginning.

--What kind of team worked on creating Shujinkou?

Julian: First of all, we have seven composers. I also like composing, so I'm one of them. Of course, my skills are not that great compared to the others. I asked them to shape the music I imagined. I wrote the scenario, which is like a script of about 200 pages. I had five writers turn it into dialogue and other things. We have seven illustrators, who drew concept art, character designs, and illustrations that build the world of "Shujinkou". We have four QA (Quality Assurance) people. We've been asking them to check the game for just under two years. This year alone, they found nearly 1,000 bugs!

At one point I had a few programmer interns write some code for the game, but at the time, the game's specifications were unclear and uncertain, and a lot of the code wasn't ready for production, so I ended up rewriting 99.9% of what they had written myself over the course of about four or five years. You could say I rewrote it all.

--In which countries are your team members currently working?

Julian: We have four artists in Germany and one QA in the UK. He's an MIT graduate who teaches computer science to high school students and is very smart. Lead artist Rachel Liu lives in Michigan, USA, and lead composer Brian LaGuardia lives in Colorado. We have members living in California, Washington, Texas, Hawaii, (many other states), and even Australia. We're all working in different places.

--It's true that this team is only possible because of today's remote work environment.

Julian: This wouldn't have been possible without the remote work environment, so I'm grateful to the engineers who prepared it. I'd like to tell the next generation that this is one of many new ways to run a video game studio.

Another thing I want to emphasize is that none of the team members have experience releasing a proper game. We have released small games, but none of the five writers have any experience in the game industry. The musicians have experience in arranging, but this is the first time they have composed a game on the scale of "Shujinkou".

However, I think this is a work that can compete with AAA titles, and I want to challenge myself with "Shujinkou". Although I have no significant experience in the game industry, I negotiated with Nintendo and Sony by myself in Japanese and English, gained access to their development kits, learned how to use them, and am close to being able to release "Shujinkou" on almost all consoles. The Nintendo Switch version is likely to be released in the second half of 2025, but there should be a simultaneous release on PC/PS4/PS5. A demo has already been distributed on PS5. I studied everything from scratch, had it reviewed by the applicable certification teams, and even if it was rejected, I remade it, submitted it again, kept getting rejected until it (Shujinkou) passed all certifications. I've been doing that kind of thing alone for a long time, and I won't give up until I succeed.

--The soundtrack features a number of distinguished people, including Ryo Noguchi, who contributed to the music for Suntory's well-known TV commercial "Green Dakara-chan." How did you approach him?

Julian: After coming to Japan, I found myself in the middle of production, saying "I don't have enough music." Naturally, I thought about finding a Japanese composer, but I didn't know where to look. I was in a difficult position, so I decided to directly call a school that teaches composition.

I promoted the game there, and had the opportunity to have an online meeting with Ryo Noguchi. He also introduced me to other Japanese artists and created some amazing music for me. I was happy when he said later that he "believed in Julian's passion."

He also told me about mastering artist Ryuichi Tanaka, who mastered many original soundtracks from the "Pokémon" series (main series Original Soundtracks), and I contacted the studio, met him in person, and convinced him to master Shujinkou's original soundtrack. I'm grateful that I was able to work with such wonderful people. I haven't told them about your mother yet, though.

--So why did you decide to tell us about your mother in this interview?

Julian: I think there are many people in this world who are facing the same hardships that I once experienced. There are people all over the world, not just Japanese, who are suffering. I have never considered suicide, but I understand the reasons and motives why someone may think about suicide.

I can deeply understand the hopeless perspective of "There is no point in trying because the person I love is no longer here." And among those who read this interview, there may be someone who will sadly encounter a similar situation tomorrow, or perhaps had a similar experience 10 years ago. Or there may be someone who is currently bedridden with cancer or another disease.

I thought it would be good for various people, those who are struggling now and those who have not yet faced it, to know this story. The Internet is a scary place, so I expect various reactions, but I want to say that I am not a malicious person. Julian Rice is just a 26-year-old man with a dream. Please be kind to me.

If your parents are kind to you, I hope you will return the kindness properly. It may be difficult if you have bad parents, but if you have children, I hope you aspire to become a role model for them. If you have parents who took good care of you and are still alive, try calling them or going back to see them. It's fine if you say, "Some dude named Julian told me to call you" (laughs).

--"Shujinkou" may seem like a strange game to native Japanese gamers. Finally, could you give a message to our readers?

Julian: Since it is not yet available in Japanese, I will not ask Japanese gamers to "buy it." But if you think this game is "interesting" and like the demo version, please remember me. Of course, fan art is very welcome. I'm always waiting for your cute derivative works!

If you can speak English, please try playing this game. You will not regret it. There is also a Discord server, which I check every day, and I can respond in either English or Japanese. I would be happy to hear from you anytime!

--Thank you for your time!
The 3D dungeon RPG "Shujinkou" is scheduled for release in February 2025. Japanese localization is planned for 2025. Whether you can speak English or not, DRPG fans should definitely check it out.
Thank you for reading the interview.