Mineko’s Night Market arrives on PlayStation and Xbox today. With the game now officially in players’ paws on all platforms, Brent Kobayashi, co-founder of Meowza Games, took a moment to share the wide-ranging, deeply personal, and completely neko-riffic inspirations behind the game.
From his formative exposure to Japanese culture as a child, to him and his partner (and Meowza Games co-founder) Brandi’s adventurous enterprises in their local craft festival scene, it’s clear that real, authentic life experience suffuses the mystery and whimsy of Mt. Fugu. Read on for anecdotes about how Japanese legends, their own crafty endeavors, and (of course) their love of cats came together to shape their game.
The game begins with Mineko and her father starting a new life in a new, unfamiliar place. What inspired this part of the story?
Brent: I drew a lot of parallels from my own personal life growing up and having to move around as a kid. At that age, trying to navigate a new school feels like entering a new world. Oftentimes, it was the shared love and passion for hobbies like trading cards and cartoons that served as a catalyst for making new friends. Much of our main character Mineko’s story revolves around her trying to find her way in a new place around new people, all while being thrust into this mystery of the Sun Cat, Nikko, who acts as her own cat-alyst to eventually finding her place in her new island home.
Tell us more about the inspirations behind the game’s setting of Mt. Fugu Island.
Brent: I was born in Vancouver, Canada to two Japanese-born parents who often surrounded me with Japanese culture, including visits to the local Powell Street Festival, an annual festival featuring foods and events of Japanese culture. When I met Meowza Games co-founder Brandi, we would attend many of the markets and craft shows around town, including the Richmond Night Market, another major Asian cultural hub. It was our love for these events, combined with our shared love of Japanese culture, that primarily inspired us to start work on the project that ultimately became Mineko’s Night Market.
What are you hoping to convey through the concept of the night market, which is often a place for both commerce and community in real life?
Brent: The game’s Night Market itself represents the health and vitality of the community itself. As Mineko progresses through the weekly Night Markets, we see the economy of the island picking up as more and more vendors return to the Market and rediscover it as a means to make a living. The Night Market also features events like games that the townsfolk can participate in.
One such activity is the plays put on by the villagers and the island’s youth that are meant to impart the market’s deep history and much of the island’s lore. We enjoyed writing these, because they gave us an opportunity to share a lot of the island’s backstory in a way that keeps it light and enjoyable without being too heavy-handed with the lore.
Let’s talk about the game’s crafts. Why did you pick the specific crafts players can engage in?
Brent: Players can craft items of various mediums including sewing, woodcrafting, pottery, and others. Brandi is the crafty one, and early on in our relationship, we combined my love of illustration and her love of crafts into various products that we would bring to craft shows. We’d sell stuff like pouches, bags, and stuffed toys, similar to the ones you can find in the game! We always knew we wanted to incorporate something like that into a game someday. During our time attending these craft shows, we met artisans involved in all sorts of arts and crafts disciplines, so a lot of the items you craft in the game are inspired by the types of handmade items we’d see at the shows and night markets we would attend.
Cats play a central role in Mineko’s Night Market, from the cute felines that inhabit Mt. Fugu Island to the mysterious figure of Nikko, the Sun Cat. What’s your personal relationship with cats?
Brent: Both Brandi and I grew up around cats, so we’ve always had a love for them. To this day, we inexplicably receive the gracious gift of regular visits to our porch from cats around the neighborhood, many of whom tend to act as guards, sitting on our front stoop for reasons we’re unsure of. We’ve both grown allergic to cats as we’ve gotten older and can’t have cats of our own, so this game was partially made so that we can vicariously live in a world surrounded by cats!
Are there any specific stories or myths that inspired the legend of Nikko?
Brent: The inspiration for Nikko came from several sources, including the popular centuries-old Japanese tale of Momotaro, a story about a child that sprung from a giant peach that floated down a river to a childless couple. We’ve also been influenced by stories about “mysterious animal friends” like you see in Studio Ghibli’s films and the original Doraemon series.
Cats hold significant symbolic value in a lot of different cultures globally. Did any specific cultures influence how cats are portrayed in the game?
Brent: We were also deeply inspired by some of the ancient tales from Japan during the early Edo period, when stories about the supernatural entities known as yokai were gaining popularity. Many at the time associated cats with yokai (like the Bakaneko), due to the often mysterious characteristics they exhibit in daily life, like their ability to stretch to unusual proportions, retract their claws, and the silent way in which they moved. Cats have long been prevalent in Japanese mythology, and this, alongside our own love for cats, made them a perfect focal point of our game.
Mineko’s Night Market is available now on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
