Full notes
Full かくれ鬼: Hide-and-Seek Horror update
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Repeated intro
Hello! This is the KAKUREONI dev team.
What changed
- Maps
- UI and audio
- Events
- Store
- Gameplay
Today, we’d like to talk about another feature from our roadmap that has been progressing in development.
This time, we’ll be focusing on:
Task: Ghost Update 👻
The Problem We Found During the CBT: “Ghosts Are Too Strong”
In KAKUREONI, alongside the Oni that hunts down the children, there are also spirits (ghosts) that wander throughout the map and assist the Oni.
These spirits can:
interfere with the hiders
reveal their locations to the Oni
During our previous CBT, our main priority was simply making the ghost system function properly within the game.
However, this led to an unexpected issue:
The ghosts ended up feeling more threatening than the Oni itself.
Of course, spirits are an important part of creating fear and tension.
However, this wasn’t quite the experience we wanted KAKUREONI to be about.
At the heart of KAKUREONI, what we want players to enjoy most is:
A deadly serious game of Oni tag between the Oni and the children.
With that in mind, our development team began rethinking a key question:
“What makes something truly frightening?”
Recreating “Real” Spirits
“What makes ghosts truly terrifying?”
To redesign the behavior of the spirits, our development team went back and did more research.
(We’ll talk about how we researched this later… 👻)
And as we dug deeper, we started noticing a common pattern.
That pattern was this:
“True fear doesn’t attack you right away.”
True fear begins with silence.
Like something quietly staring at you from the shadows… watching carefully, without making a sound.
It observes you patiently, slowly closing the distance little by little.
It’s because that silence lasts so long that the moment you suddenly lock eyes with it stays burned into your mind.
We wanted to bring that feeling of “real” ghosts into KAKUREONI as well.
So, what exactly is “KAKUREONI”?
As we reconsidered our direction, we took a step back and asked ourselves:
“What kind of game is KAKUREONI at its core?”
And in doing so, we returned to the original concept behind the game:
“A horror experience condensed into just three minutes.”
At the start of each match, players can simply enjoy a pure game of KAKUREONI.
But as time passes,
the world gradually begins to feel… wrong.
What first feels like a small sense of unease
slowly transforms into inescapable terror by the end.
That is the kind of horror experience we want to create:
Horror that grows more intense as time goes on.
The Role of the Spirits
With this in mind, we redesigned the spirits to become something that grows frightening later in the match.
Instead of immediately cornering players from the very beginning, the spirits are now designed to:
simply exist nearby
feel someone watching you
slowly approach from behind
suddenly appear much closer than expected
We’re aiming for a type of fear that slowly creeps up on you over time.
Of course, at the core of KAKUREONI, the true stars of the experience are still:
“The Oni” and “the children”
The spirits are not meant to take away from that experience.
Instead, we want them to function as something that makes the game of Oni tag even more terrifying.
The Dev Team’s Search for “Real Fear”
By the way, led by our horror-loving team member “Utama Poyo,” the development team has actually been visiting real haunted locations to research what “real fear” feels like… 👻
We’ve been exploring questions like:
How can we bring those experiences into the game?
What kinds of expressions and details feel truly “real” in horror?
We’ve also talked about this in past interviews, including one with Dengeki Online, so feel free to check it out if you’re interested!
📝 What Makes KAKUREONI Special? Game Dev VTuber Nanahana Nanaha, Who’s Bad With Horror Games, Talks About the Appeal of the Game, Harsh(?) Horror Location Research, and Thoughts on TGS 【Dengeki Pixelade! #4】
https://dengekionline.com/article/202512/58821
📝 “What If There Were Nails Inside Cotton Candy?” The Uniquely Twisted Horror Sense of Game Dev VTuber ShuShu Urara 【Dengeki Pixelade! #14】
https://dengekionline.com/article/202603/66305
“If we can’t explain what we’re making in 30 seconds, then maybe we still haven’t fully understood its core.”
That idea became the foundation of our now-ongoing tradition:
The “30-Seconds Challenge!”
This time, you’ll also get to hear Poyo’s passionate thoughts about the spirits 👻
So if you’re interested, be sure to watch the full video!
Full video here 👇
We hope you’ll look forward to seeing how these updates will shape the actual gameplay experience in future updates and videos!
And if KAKUREONI interests you even a little, we’d love for you to continue following the game 👻
Wishlist KAKUREONI on Steam ✅
Join the Community Hub and share your thoughts ✍️
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! 👀
Source
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