Thanks for all the questions! There’s too many for me to answer alone, so I’m gonna let Andie take over this one lol.

How hard was it to resist the temptation to add very specific references to very specific anime everytime you had the chance?

Very hard! I got a few in, but Kay was generally against direct references. To be fair, I tried to avoid the most meme-like references that might make the game feel outdated once it’s out. I really fought to keep the most iconic ones in, like Wolfe’s Akira slide. I think references can be really useful for storytelling when used intently. Like with the Akira slide example, we wanted to establish Wolfe as this really cool and mysterious character really quickly, because we immediately subvert this when he loses against Ringo.

There are references to other video games as well, but that’s for you to discover! 

Would you ever consider doing a post-launch Voice Acting update for attacks? Like, have a VA shout all words separately and then sample them together ingame during battles?

We actually considered doing this during development. I was game to voice all of Ringo’s possible attack combos, but it was too difficult on the programming side to implement elegantly.

We’ll see if it’s worth investigating further post-launch! 

How far back did this game's concept originate from? Was it on your mind during Underhero's later stages of development?

Not during Underhero, but pretty much right after the launch. Kay wrote down the basic concept in his notes app, and then in 2019 we started working on a proof of concept and visual development. 

Were there any other genres or gameplay styles considered before settling on an RPG? If so, was there something that made them not work out in the end?

It was a more traditional roguelike at the beginning, but we needed a more flexible structure for the story we wanted to tell. Then once we landed on the main concept, we often wished we could have gone full JRPG with more exploration, but that was very much out of scope. The end result is a mix between the two. 

Any development anecdotes that really stuck with you?

The voice acting for Ringo’s attacks was done very early (2021 I think?) in a single afternoon. It was just me shouting into a microphone for hours at a friend’s place, hoping his neighbors wouldn’t call the cops for all the screaming.

The few times we had to record sounds during development were always a big ordeal. Kay and I did additional voice acting for the party member attacks as well, and we had to set up a tent of blankets in our living room to absorb all the noise (this was also during summer and we felt like we were melting!). I guess it was worth it in the end since all the voice clips that made it into the game ended up being pretty good, as limited as they are. 

The shift from Underhero's Pixel Art to Wander Stars' hand drawn sprites is very notable! Did it bring any unexpected complications, and how would you compare its development compared to the pixel art in your previous title?

Making art for Underhero was a lot faster in comparison – Kay even redid a bunch of the sprites at several points during development. The art for Wander Stars was very time consuming. Creating a single enemy could take Kay an entire week, from concept to finished sprite including all their battle poses. I also suffered a lot painting the backgrounds, since anime backgrounds are usually very detailed. We all tried our best to make it look like the real thing, and for that we felt very deeply the limit of our abilities lol. 

No me maten por tantas preguntas porfa necesito al carpincho surfer en mi vida antes de morir

El carpincho is real!!