Production Column: Part 2

Steam post imageIngredients: rice flour, tapioca flour, chestnuts, dates, apricots, raisins, cacao nibs, coconut oil, cinnamon, aluminum-free baking powder, vinegar

When it comes to food in gamebooks… for some reason, “dried meat” is what comes to my mind. Even in the very first gamebook I made back in junior high school, the food item was “dried meat.”

And the “dried meat” I imagine here is basically jerky. That lovely smoky aroma, the right amount of saltiness, the rich savoriness of meat…

But I feel like I once heard somewhere that the dried meat actually eaten in medieval Europe—the homeland of fantasy, so to speak—was hard enough to make your teeth fall out, overly salty, smelly, and terrible...

Whatever the case, there is something romantic about dried meat, with its wild and rugged image.

Romance… how nice. Marron… which brings us to this chestnut cake!

In the Kingdom of Yulan, this is a traditional cake eaten during the harvest festival. The version common folk eat is much smaller and more bread-like, but among the nobility, it becomes a lavish cake like this! Incidentally, the cake in the photo had a refined, mildly sweet flavor and was absolutely delicious. The staff enjoyed it afterward, of course.

This cake does not appear in the game itself, but we have prepared several kinds of food for you.

The very first food that appears in this game is a citrus fruit—an orange.This is because I am from Ehime Prefecture, and I have a special attachment to citrus fruits. Among them, there is a variety called “Beni Madonna,” which is so delicious that it has earned the nickname “the citrus fruit that makes people lose all self-control” When an acquaintance gave me some of these mandarins, I was repeatedly seized by the desire to keep them all for myself.

Fortunately, I succeeded in casting off that temptation—like Galadriel resisting the lure of the Ring—and managed to share them with my neighbors! Truly, the strength of appetite, one of humanity’s “three great desires,” is not to be underestimated. When you manage to restrain yourself, you should give yourself some credit!

It is something we tend to forget because we do it every day, but to “eat” is, in essence, an intense act of accepting another existence into yourself. Just as with information and environments, I do not think it is good to swallow everything whole and accept anything without question. At the same time, I do not think it is good to become too biased, too oppositional, or too selective.

It would be wonderful if we could properly face whatever is before us—food included—and choose what suits us as we are at that moment. With that in mind, we have prepared events and meals that we hope will satisfy you all.

Digitalis Publishing

Yoshio Nishimura