Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin developer takes a cue from the real-life news and creates giant rice plants

Publication date of the original Japanese article: 2021-09-08 18:31 (JST)
Translated by. Ari Clark

Naru, the developer of Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin, has posted an intriguing video to his personal Twitter account. In the video, which seems to be in-development footage of the game, giant rice plants stand tall in a rice paddy, towering far above the height of the main character, Sakuna.

According to Naru’s comment, the height of the swiftly-growing giant rice plants in the video he posted apparently comes to about 5 meters (16.4 feet). The typical size of a real-life rice plant at harvest time is about 1 meter (3.2 feet), which makes this a staggering size even when compared to the meticulously realistic rice plants cultivated as crops in the official version of the game. Nevermind petite little Sakuna, these ears of rice wave high over the head of even a mammoth of a man like Tauemon.

Seeing a countless number of such giant rice plants standing tall in a rice paddy is, in a word, astounding. They go way beyond the normal density level of a rice paddy, to the point where Sakuna quickly vanishes from sight when she parts the stalks and climbs into the middle of the paddy. It seems like harvesting these rice plants would be a real hassle!

The giant rice plants unveiled by Naru reach a height of 5 meters. The scene of them ripening is not part of the official version of the game, but seems to be a recording of them being experimentally implemented in-game. Naru’s real intentions are unclear, but his inspiration for test-driving these giant rice plants seems to have been an incident reported in the AFPBB News on September 5.

As reported by the AFPBB News (linked article in Japanese only), the Chongqing Branch of China’s National Hybrid Rice R&D Center has successfully cultivated experimental giant rice plants. Apparently, some of the giant rice plants that were successfully cultivated can boast heights exceeding 2.2 meters (7.2 feet), over twice the height of ordinary rice plants.  The number of individual grains that ripen on a single stalk of this giant rice can apparently exceed 500, as well, compared to the 100-200 grains on an ordinary stalk.

It was Koichi of Team Edelweiss who first responded to the successful cultivation of this giant rice. He was in charge of character modelling, environment modelling, as well as the script. Naru then replied to the tweet where Koichi had quoted the news report in question. “I hear deepwater rice can get up to 5 meters or something, so I guess rice plants being huge isn’t as strange as it might seem,” he commented.

Later, on September 8, Naru got around to making the video post that showed the giant rice growing. He seems to have essentially completed the implementation of giant rice in-game at the astounding speed of less than three days.

Plus, this isn’t the only time Naru has posted content involving in-game experiments. In the past, he reported on his experimental in-game implementation of a technique for real-time rendering of specular reflections and environmental background reflections called Screen Space Reflection (SSR). However, according to Naru, he didn’t end up officially adopting the technique, since raising the transparency messed with the aesthetic effects and made it difficult to tell how far the rice was submerged in the water, among other issues.

Past examples like this one really speak to Naru’s agile adaptability, which allows him to take a flash of inspiration and make it into reality almost instantly. You might say this giant-rice experiment and its accompanying video post are yet another gift born from his playful adaptability.

It’s currently unclear whether this 5-meter-tall giant rice will be officially implemented in-game.

Incidentally, Naru’s Twitter account also posts all sorts of valuable material and secret production content that can’t be viewed in the official game, such as images of Sakuna and Myrthe sleeping in their house and PR images of how the village looks in the rainy season. If you’re interested, you should definitely try checking out Naru’s tweets.