Guardian Beast Creator Reveals How a Rejected Dragon Story Became a Fantasy Game

Takahiro Yonemura:

Two things, really. First, I love both hard science fiction and pure fantasy, and I found myself wondering what kind of story might be born if I mixed the two together. The second was a little bit of… anger.

There’s actually a short story of mine that never saw the light of day, called The Evil Dragon Sylphid. It’s told entirely from a dragon’s point of view. I’ve always been fascinated by intelligence that isn’t human, so I tried to write, as realistically as I could, how a non-human mind might talk about us humans. Unfortunately, a (human!) editor dismissed it in one line: “It’s humans who read books, you know.”

So I thought: fine, then I’ll run a human perspective and a dragon-and-beast perspective side by side. Half out of stubbornness, I pushed that slightly outrageous idea through and got it out into the world, and that became Guardian Beast. From the start, it was a story with multiple perspectives running in parallel, a sort of adventure game that had broken the usual “shape” of a novel. So I’d been eyeing an interactive version for a very, very long time. Honestly, in my head it was probably already a game the moment it was published as a novel.

Takahiro Yonemura:

Because the novel already switches perspectives so often, turning it into an interactive experience went surprisingly smoothly. I placed choices mainly at moments where I thought, “If I were this character, I’d genuinely hesitate here.”

That said, what I wanted most was for people to savour a slightly unusual story right to the end. So while there are plenty of detours, the destination, the story’s message, doesn’t change much. If I had to compare it to something, it’s like a stroll where the goal stays the same, but the fun lies in which little backstreets you wander into along the way.

Takahiro Yonemura:

Making music is one of my hobbies, and I quietly release tracks as a desktop music creator. So my ears started itching: “I wonder how this line would sound in another language?” That’s where it all began.

When I tried it out, I found an on-device speech synthesis AI that was a true master of conversation. Its English is about a hundred times more natural than mine (laughs). “Okay, what about this line? And this sentence?” It escalated from there, and before I knew it, I, the author, had fallen deep down the rabbit hole of language myself.

It was only afterwards that I realised, “Hang on, this could become a fun way to learn.” So rather than being the plan from the beginning, the language-learning side grew backwards from my own obsession.

Takahiro Yonemura:

Thank you, that’s music to a developer’s ears!

What I was aiming for is something only digital media can offer: a kind of “knowledge snacking” experience. From my own experience, and from my years teaching as a part-time lecturer, I’ve found that when you get an answer the very moment you think “I want to know!” or “Why?”, it sticks in your memory surprisingly well.

“How would this line be said in Japanese?” The instant you wonder that, the side-by-side display answers you right there. Learning without having to stop the story: that’s the biggest goal.

Takahiro Yonemura:

Being made to listen to a long explanation that drones on like an incantation is, honestly, boring, and your brain can’t keep up with organising it all. I’ve felt that frustration many times myself when learning.

“What’s this bit?” → a quick tap → “Ah, I see!”

I believe these small moments build up like the steps of a marathon, carrying you to a faraway finish line before you know it. That idea also came from experience.

…That all sounds rather cool, but as an engineer, I have a confession to make. On low-spec PCs and the smartphone version, reading everything aloud took far too long to process. Accepting that limitation and working around it was part of the reason, too. Problems really do spark ideas, don’t they?

Takahiro Yonemura:

I wanted Guardian Beast to be something you can carry around like a book. There’s a smartphone version too, so I’d love people to enjoy it without worrying about a connection, relaxing under the duvet as if listening to the radio. Even at the summit of Mount Fuji! …Okay, that part’s a joke.

There’s also a more serious reason. If a work depends on an external service, the moment that service shuts down, the work’s value drops to zero. A book on your shelf can still be read even if the publisher’s servers go down, right? I wanted it to be that kind of work.

The biggest technical challenge was designing a system that lets users hop between four languages quickly, like flicking a switch, without ever fiddling with tedious settings. Smartphones have limited memory, so I really had to rack my brains over this one.

Takahiro Yonemura:

To be completely honest, I’ve become jealous of my own protagonist (laughs). It’s my own story, and yet the protagonist gets to have heart-to-heart conversations with dragons and beasts. As the author, I find that a little unfair! And since players can give the protagonist any name they like, I suppose what I’m really jealous of is the players themselves. Since the game gave the characters voices of their own, that feeling has only grown stronger.

That’s why I’ve become much more eager to try out different forms of expression. I’m a bit crazy, so I keep thinking how fun it would be to have a system using VR and AI that lets you ask the characters questions directly. And honestly, I’m the one who wants to try it most! I feel far more driven about it than before.

I made a new discovery, too. Looking back, everything I’ve written or created has been about encounters, incidents and discoveries involving “something other than humans.” And I realised that this multilingual text and voice switching comes from the very same urge: wanting to connect with minds and people in other countries, and to learn more and more about them.

Takahiro Yonemura:

It’s only just been released, so it’s still too early to say how it’s landing. But I’ve already had one unexpected enquiry: “Can you display English and German side by side?”

…Erm, I’m actually Japanese. A Japanese author-developer making a version with no Japanese in it at all?! That one caught me completely off guard (laughs). But it means the game is already walking out into the world beyond Japan, so secretly, I was really happy about it.

Takahiro Yonemura:

I’m thinking about whether I could give each character a voice that suits them.

In fact, one particular “sound-effect-like voice” in the game is something I recorded myself, added effects to, and layered many times over. Which sound is it? …I’ll leave that for you to find. Without getting in the players’ way, of course, I’m scheming to keep sneaking in cameos as the author from here on.

Takahiro Yonemura:

It’s a story where you can look at the same world through completely different eyes: human, dragon and beast.

And beyond that, try launching the app during the day, and then again at night. What happens? …I’ll leave you to see it with your own eyes.

And one more thing. I actually had some of today’s AIs try playing the game. Without being asked, they started offering their own impressions, like “This part made me laugh” and “This bit drags a little,” and I went, “Wait, what?!” (laughs). Their impressions were quite different from a human reader’s, and I’ll admit I quietly took some of them on board.

A story about sharing hearts with non-human minds, now receiving feedback from non-human minds. The work that was once told “It’s humans who read books” has come this far. If you enjoy it along with this new experience, I’ll be so happy I’ll strike a kabuki pose. Iyooo! (That’s the classic kabuki shout for a big moment.)

Takahiro Yonemura:

I’m genuinely delighted that you love Japanese culture! And yes, I’ve been influenced head-on by Japanese values so strong they can seem almost alien (laughs).

In Japan, it’s said that objects you’ve cherished for a long time come to hold a soul, and that spoken words and strong feelings carry power as kotodama, “the spirit of words.” We even hold memorial services, essentially funerals, for robot dogs. Personifying things, whether humans, animals, tools or machines, is an everyday affair. We have folk tales about tanuki tricking people, and local mascot characters, known as yuru-chara, being issued special resident cards and treated as members of the community.

Guardian Beast sits on an extension of that sensibility. Even the scenes where people share their hearts and talk with dragons and beasts, I wrote naturally, without treating them as anything special. So yes, the influence is huge. Then I thought: mix in a wide variety of creatures and intelligences, fantasy magic, and even the science of physics, and surely a truly unique story would be born. That’s what I believed, and that’s how I shaped it.

…Well, you could also say that I fell head over heels for The NeverEnding Story and Star Trek back in primary school, got swallowed up by their eccentric worldviews, and have been charging ahead ever since (laughs). Which is why I’ve always aimed to be the “one and only.” …I just haven’t managed to become number one in sales yet (sob).