State Of The Onion

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Before he founded Onion Games in 2012, Yoshiro Kimura felt lost, a man “without a cause”. He’d left Grasshopper Manufacture, after producing Suda 51’s No More Heroes and its sequel and directing the wonderful Little King’s Story. And with the Tohoku earthquake still fresh in his mind, Kimura found himself thinking about his career. “Games didn’t seem to play a part in helping humanity, in helping Japan rebuild,” he says. Meanwhile, the industry he loved seemed to be increasingly focused on social games, and that just wasn’t Kimura at all. He wasn’t sure where to go or what to do.

The turning point came during a trip to San Francisco to attend 2012’s Independent Games Festival. Kimura looked up at a huge screen, showcasing a whole host of indie games, and found himself transfixed – and then, suddenly, inspired. “It was almost as if the screen itself was talking to me, saying, ‘Hey, Kimura. There’s all this possibility out here. What do you want to do?’”

He drew upon his feelings and frustrations, and poured them into three ideas. The first was puzzle game Million Onion Hotel, with its story set on an island that appears after Japan has sunk beneath the sea following a huge earthquake. Then came