In Nintendo's backyard, foreign indie game devs are thriving

Japan Times

16-05-2025

British programmer Dylan Cuthbert found himself in Kyoto unexpectedly.
'I knew nothing about Japan or the Japanese gaming industry when I first came to visit Nintendo back in the summer of 1990,' Cuthbert, 53, recalls. 'I was told I was going 'next week' and just hopped on the plane.'
While working as a programmer for Argonaut Software in the U.K., Cuthbert says he 'developed a fun 3D demo on the Game Boy.' A representative from Nintendo saw it at (a trade show) and was so surprised he set up a meeting in Kyoto with Gunpei Yokoi, creator of the Game Boy.
The demo became X, one of a very small number of 3D games on the handheld. The title opened a door into Nintendo for Cuthbert, who would go on to program Star Fox for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) — under the tutelage of no less than the legendary father of Mario, Zelda and countless other Nintendo franchises.
In the early 1990s, Dylan Cuthbert worked closely with Shigeru Miyamoto before founding Q-Games, his own studio, in Kyoto in 2001. |
COURTESY OF DYLAN CUTHBERT
'Shigeru Miyamoto taught me to never get too attached to an idea,' Cuthbert says. 'Sometimes for the betterment of the game you need to drop ideas that you really like.'
After the advent of the PlayStation in 1994, Cuthbert went over to Sony to work on the new console both in the U.S. and Tokyo.
'But Kyoto kept niggling at the back of my mind,' he says.
In 2001, Cuthbert founded Q-Games a few blocks from Kyoto's Karasuma Oike Station.
'Creating my own studio had been my dream since I was 13,' he says. 'I was already making little games for my school friends to play at that point. Back then I named my studio 'Unique Productions,' which became just 'Q.''
Cuthbert says that Q-Games was "the first foreigner-owned independent game studio in Kyoto." |
Q-GAMES
The studio is currently working on Dreams of Another, which Cuthbert describes as a game where characters 'use a new form of rendering to depict people's dreams, which you explore.' One gameplay mechanic involves shooting a rifle to create objects instead of destroying them.
It's a type of anything-goes creativity that Cuthbert says was in short supply earlier in his career.
'It's easy to become a drone when you're in a big corporation, but at an indie studio you need to be proactive,' he says. 'I'm always trying out new experiments.'
An example of that risk-taking spirit paying dividends is the indie game festival BitSummit, which was cofounded by then-employee John Davis and had its inaugural event in 2013
'Q-Games was the first foreigner-owned independent game studio in Kyoto,' says Cuthbert. 'This showed it could be done, and then BitSummit paved the way for other studios to set up here, such as Chuhai Labs. We were the catalyst that helped populate Kyoto with foreign game devs.'
The superfan
One such dev is American designer Jake Kazdal.
'I grew up down the street from Nintendo of America and worked there as a gameplay counselor,' Kazdal, 51, reminisces. 'People would just call me when they got stuck in games.'
Jake Kazdal (front row, right) was the only foreign-born developer on the team behind Rez. |
COURTESY OF JAKE KAZDAL
However, going to Japan was a long-held dream.
'I thought all games were made in Japan,' says Kazdal, who would later move on from customer support to 3D art and animation. 'Mario, Zelda and Metroid were huge influences on me. Also, my dad owned pizza parlors so I grew up playing Japanese arcade games.'
One day, a visitor noticed the Japanese toys on Kazdal's desk, and they fell into conversation.
'I blurted out that I'd love to work at Sega, and he said he used to work there and offered me to meet his boss who was coming to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (a now-defunct trade show in Los Angeles).'
The boss was none other than Tetsuya Mizuguchi, who was just starting his new division at Sega. He and Kazdal hit it off, and Mizuguchi invited Kazdal to come join him in Tokyo.
'It was a dream come true,' he says.
The only foreigner on a team of about 50, Kazdal would work on Rez, the pioneering title that introduced Mizuguchi's signature design of interactive synesthesia.
'Mizuguchi was the coolest boss,' Kazdal says. 'I had a fantastic time working with him on these experimental projects — really offbeat, weird, original, creative stuff. We were stabbing in the dark, but that ethos of not being afraid to try something really different has stuck with me.'
Rez was a critical success but a financial failure. The team was eventually absorbed into the team working on Sega's more successful Sonic franchise, which signaled to Kazdal that it was time to move on.
'I wanted to work on my own terms, so I decided to start my own company,' he says, and Kyoto was the obvious choice due to the established indie scene. 'It ended up being the perfect fit.'
Founded in 2009, Kazdal's studio, 17-Bit, is an homage to the SNES era.
'17-bit means taking the 16-bit ethos (a reference to the SNES' microprocessor) and then adding one more bit of modern technology and polish, as if those classic genres continued to exist on a different timeline.'
17-Bit is currently working on an unannounced action game.
'Hopefully we have something to show at BitSummit this year,' says Kazdal. 'It has really classic inspirations, but it's also very modern.'
The newcomer
A new arrival on the Kyoto scene is British designer Liam Edwards, who got started at the least-indie place imaginable.
'My first job in games was at Rockstar Games, working on Grand Theft Auto 5,' Edwards, 34, says. 'Eventually I got tired of being a tiny cog in a huge machine and decided to do something crazy and move to Japan.'
Liam Edwards (right) runs DenkiWorks with Taku Arioka and Jan de Graaf. |
COURTESY OF LIAM EDWARDS
After talking to several developers (including Kazdal) via his role as host of Final Games, a gaming podcast, Edwards was inspired to start developing his own games. A fateful meeting with Cuthbert at an event during Tokyo Game Show in 2017 resulted in a job offer at Q-Games.
When one of his homebrewed games went viral, the folks at Chuhai Labs offered Edwards the chance to put together a team to develop it into a full game. The result was the critically acclaimed Cursed to Golf, released in August 2022. The success gave him the confidence to open his own studio.
'A lot of people just want to work in games, and I get that, but I'm not interested in making any game,' Edwards says. 'I don't want to work on (games like) Grand Theft Auto, so I had to create an avenue to make the things I think are meaningful.'
In 2022, he cofounded DenkiWorks with Taku Arioka and Jan de Graaf, former teammates at Q-Games.
'We had such a good time working together that we decided we should try our hand at making a studio,' says Edwards.
DenkiWords is currently working on its debut title: Tanuki: Pon's Summer, a game 'about a little tanuki that cycles around delivering the post in the Japanese countryside to earn money to rebuild a shrine in time for a matsuri (festival).'
'The catch being he's a BMX wiz so he can do some Tony Hawk tricks while he's at it,' adds Edwards.
When asked if Edwards sees himself as a part of Japan's gaming dev landscape, he shies away from a cut-and-dry answer.
'We're all making indie games in Japan, but we're not really part of the Japanese games industry,' he says. 'We're part of the global indie scene but we're based in Japan, and that's what makes us unique. We're a part of the West as much as we're a part of Japan.'
In his view, this separates Kyoto's foreign developers from the actual Japanese indie scene, which Edwards describes as 'solo creators or two-people teams who share their games at small events.'
'They're not making a living out of it, they're just doing it because they love making games. So there's a disconnect there (with what we're doing).'
If Edwards feels disjointed from the indie scene elsewhere in Japan, his devotion to Kyoto itself more than makes up for it.
'If you're gonna make indies in Japan, you're gonna make them in Kyoto,' he says. 'Of course, we're all in the shadow of Nintendo, but we're also here because of Nintendo.'