Splatoon’s Inklings Began Existence As Tofu
Nintendo has released an English translation of the new Iwata Asks roundtable, the longrunning series where Nintendo’s president asks his developers about the behind-the-scenes process behind your favorite games. This time, the doors are blown off the development of the upcoming ink shooter Splatoon.
After development of the Wii U, its firmware and its initial game library, directors Yusuke Amano, Tsubasa Sakaguchi and their team brainstormed to come up with new game concepts. Seventy ideas were on the table and evaluated over a period of six months, with just one game making the final cut — a shooting game where the goal was to cover more of an enclosed area in ink than your rival.
In the original Splatoon demo, the players were giant blocks of tofu (tofu being easier to model than people), that could shoot ink out of their square noses. The map was on the TV and the gameplay screen was displayed on the Wii U gamepad. This was because program director Shintaro Sato figured a large part of the game’s strategy would involve hiding from your opponent. Eventually, the hiding strategy involved diving into the ink itself, creating the need for a fish-like character. (They discussed keeping the tofu characters, but decided “How many copies could we sell with tofu?”)
For a time, the characters became rabbits, but people kept asking them why the rabbits were hiding in water and shooting ink. So they wrote down all the traits they needed the characters to have, and after several revisions, came up with humanoid creatures called Inklings that turned into squid to swim through ink.
During the final months of development, the team was able to see prototypes of the three Splatoon amiibo that would be created to promote the game. They were proud of how well the characters translated to real 3D space. Upon hearing this, Iwata remarked “Good thing you gave up on the tofu.”