Hello! This is the KAKUREONI dev team.
Today, we’d like to take a closer look at one of the features from our previous roadmap that’s currently in development:
"KAKUREONI" is a game about
But what we want to create isn’t just a horror game.
At the heart of it all is something much simpler:
the feeling of truly playing as a child.
More than anything, the game is about that
Walking home at sunset.
Meeting up with friends after school.
Candy shops. Rock-paper-scissors. Games of tag.
Back then, they were just games…
and yet somehow, they felt like your entire world.
KAKUREONI is being created as a way to relive that childhood feeling once again—
but this time, inside a world of horror.
While talking with the development team, we asked each other:
“What memories from childhood stayed with you the most?”
And the answers that kept coming up were:
Going to candy shops together
Playing rock-paper-scissors to decide the Oni (Seeker)
That’s why KAKUREONI has a candy shop.
And another idea we had for deciding who becomes the Oni… was rock-paper-scissors.
At first, we considered keeping it simple:
“Whoever loses at rock-paper-scissors becomes the Oni.”
But as we talked more about it, something started to feel off.
For some people, rock-paper-scissors can carry the feeling of:
winning and losing
“the loser becomes it (Seeker)”
That unspoken rule many of us grew up with.
But in KAKUREONI, we wanted both roles— the Oni (Seeker) and the ones running away (Hiders)—to feel equally fun and exciting to play.
That’s why we didn’t want players to feel like:
“The Oni is the bad role.”
We asked ourselves:
“If not rock-paper-scissors… then how should we choose the Oni?”
As we explored different ideas, we eventually arrived at the idea of a lottery system.
And then someone said:
“If we’re doing this, why not make it feel like an omikuji fortune draw?”
That idea eventually became what is now known as the “Oni Draw.”
What we wanted to create wasn’t just a way to assign roles.
It was the feeling before the draw begins.
The tension of wondering:
That moment when everyone looks at each other in silence.
We wanted to recreate those memories of play itself.
In KAKUREONI, both the Oni and the hiders offer completely different kinds of fun.
That’s why we don’t want players to feel:
“Aw… I got stuck as the Oni…”
Instead, we want reactions more like:
“Nice, I’m the Oni this round!”
We’re also experimenting with other ideas, like letting players volunteer to be the Oni.
We’re constantly thinking about how to make the very feeling of “playing together” even more fun and memorable.
Lately, our development team has been trying something called the:
The idea behind it is simple:
Sometimes, if an idea only works with a long explanation, it may mean the heart of it still isn’t clear enough yet.
But when something truly has a strong core,
even a few short words can carry its passion.
That’s how we see it.
At the end of this video, we also take on a:
Were we actually able to explain it in 30 seconds?
Watch the full video here 👇
In KAKUREONI, even these elements that may not seem like “game systems” at first are incredibly important to us.
We don’t want to create a game about winning or losing.
We want to recreate the feeling of children truly playing together — that atmosphere we all remember from childhood.
That’s the feeling we continue developing the game with every day.
And if KAKUREONI interests you even a little, we’d really appreciate your support:
Thank you so much for supporting KAKUREONI!
📢Announcement!
The game development VTuber group behind KAKUREONI, “Pixelade!”, has officially launched a note blog! 🎉
Pixelade! Game Development Club 📖
https://note.com/pixelade_forces
We’ll be sharing game development stories, behind-the-scenes moments, struggles, and progress updates from our streams in a more easy-to-read format!
So if you don’t always have time to catch our livestreams, we hope you’ll check it out there! 👀