Former Chibi-Robo! devs want their new game to be the Japanese equivalent of American ninja movies, with a setting that looks like the real thing but isn’t 

Last week, Tiny Wonder Studio, comprised of former members of Skip, announced a spiritual successor to the Chibi-Robo! series. Titled koROBO, the upcoming indie adventure game is set in Americo, in Brocklyn, New Yock City – and no, this is not a series of typos. In a recent interview with 4Gamer, koROBO’s developers gave interesting comments regarding this fictional yet extremely familiar-sounding setting. 

While Chibi-Robo! also featured faux American-looking places much like the upcoming koROBO will, this is not an attempt to make US gamers the target audience. It is a creative decision that aims to maximize the game’s playful nature and utilize the goofy potential of cross-cultural misconceptions. As Chibi-Robo! series’ director Kenichi Nishi puts it, “if a Japanese person made a Japanese house, there would be no innovations, and it would be boring. On the other hand, if we set the game in the US, things would get too realistic because it’s a real country, and we would also have to think about what period to depict.” 

As a solution to this challenge, the development team of Chibi-Robo! decided to make a game that looked like it was set in the US but was not quite American – “a fantasy close to reality made with all the misconceptions we Japanese have.” It seems that this idea, which the developers describe as “an equivalent of the misunderstood Japan seen in American ninja movies” is being carried over into koROBO. 

Tiny Wonder Studio is planning to crowdfund support for koROBO, with the goal of releasing the game on PC and modern consoles. The crowdfunding campaign will be launched on Kickstarter for English speakers.