Game Freak’s upcoming free-to-play magical girl game Ame Nochi Hare Onna is quite a change of pace from the Pokémon games the studio is known for. In a recent Famitsu interview, director and producer Shigeru Ohmori explained how the project came to be, and why he decided to create a game combining the magical girl genre with real-time weather.
After wrapping up development on 2022’s Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Ohmori tried his hand at creating different games outside of the Pokémon franchise. One of his ideas was based on his early Game Freak days placing grass patches in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. This idea would end up becoming Pokémon Pokopia. Another idea, which was developed simultaneously with Pokémon Pokopia, came from him observing his wife doing laundry. Combined with his desire to pursue “forms of expression that can only be achieved in a completely original game,” the latter idea would become the basis for Ame Nochi Hare Onna.
Ohmori explained that he envisioned a game involving magical girls who change into outfits that give them different abilities based on what they are wearing. This would fuel his desire to “thoroughly explore the concept of bishojo characters,” which would become one of the core elements behind Ame Nochi Hare Onna.
The team also wanted to create a game “firmly rooted in real life, with a sense of everyday reality.” Since many people in Japan routinely use their phones to access real-time data about the weather and their surroundings, Game Freak thought it would be interesting to combine this data with the concept of magical girls. According to Ohmori, the weather data meshed “most beautifully” with the core gaming experience.
Ame Nochi Hare Onna’s gameplay loop revolves around patrolling the city with your magical girls (called “Hare Onna”) and fighting sentient trash monsters in turn-based combat using powers from their Hare-gi outfits as well as the current climate. The Hare-gi get dirty over time, requiring them to be washed and dried to preserve the strength of their powers (outfits dry faster on sunny days and take longer on rainy days).
According to Ohmori, Ame Nochi Hare Onna is designed so as to not intrude upon players’ daily lives. Instead, it is meant to be played during in-between moments when you check the weather and do other similar tasks (a standard patrol takes roughly 5 to 10 minutes). Ohmori says that the goal was to seamlessly incorporate the game into players’ daily routines, citing the example of taking out a rain-type Hare Onna during a rainy day to gain an advantage in combat.
Ame Nochi Hare Onna is scheduled to release this Winter for iOS and Android. The game is currently set to be a Japan-exclusive title.
