Square Enix’s Tetsuya Nomura has a huge stock of game proposals “lying dormant” 

Square Enix’s Tetsuya Nomura recently participated in a three-way interview with Famitsu and Takumi Isobe, the young director of FuRyu’s upcoming RPG Reynatis. Over the course of the discussion, Nomura gives insights into his creative process in drafting game proposals and even mentions a “labyrinth” of projects he has come up with that have yet to see the light of day. 

Credited as the creator of the Kingdom Hearts series and known for his deep involvement in Final Fantasy and The World Ends with You series, Tetsuya Nomura is a developer whose inner workings many fans and fellow creators would like to have a peek at. It comes as no surprise that Reynatis’s director jumped at the chance to ask Nomura about how he approaches the process of creating a new IP from scratch. 

According to Nomura, it all starts with forming the game’s worldview, after which a synopsis and characters are worked into the framework. At this stage, the idea gets shelved into Nomura’s mind, and the next time he is approached by a producer for a game project, he picks whichever idea of his best suits the occasion and adapts it to the project based on factors such as compatible platforms, scale of development and whether the process will be in-house orf outsourced. As a fellow creator, Isobe describes the approach as unusual, as he personally works his way backwards, forming his worldbuilding around specific scenes he wants to depict in a game. 

Nomura also mentions that he makes sure to write a synopsis draft at the idea stage, so that he “doesn’t forget what the proposal is about.” Thankfully, Nomura stores all of his proposals on his PC, so he can gradually refine the projects that don’t get picked up. The polished proposals marinate in a folder charmingly titled “NEW.”  

When asked about the volume of potential game projects he has, Nomura notes that while his stock is being rapidly depleted, he still has a “huge number of game proposals lying dormant,” full scenarios included. On the other hand, he jokes that his folders are subdivided into a labyrinth so complex that he wonders if some of the proposals “will ever see the light of day.” 

Speaking of his current goals, Nomura comments that he is prioritizing his health while working on ongoing projects, including already announced titles.