Interview: Satoshi Ogihara and Yuki Okano discuss four years of Teppen and the process of introducing new Capcom franchises to the game

Teppen has recently begun celebrating its fourth anniversary with a brand-new event called 30_Minutes.Exe. Since it first released many years ago, the game has played host to many popular Capcom franchises, including Resident, Monster Hunter, and Devil May Cry.

Having different series crossover is not always as simple as it sounds. It's important to pay homage to the original material while making everything feel like it belongs, which is tricky. Teppen's development team agrees with this concept, and we recently had the chance to speak with them about how this fine balance. We also discussed the challenges the team has faced alongside the process of introducing new cards.

Ogihara: I’m Satoshi Ogihara from Gungho Online Entertainment. I serve as the director for the game side of things in TEPPEN, meaning I work on things like making new content, game balance, and operations for the game.

Okano: I’m Yuki Okano from Capcom. I work as a director for TEPPEN alongside Ogihara-san. I work on things like the direction of each card pack, the design of cards, the design of characters including heroes, and world-building within TEPPEN.

Okano and Ogihara: TEPPEN is a PvP game, so we believe changes to the competitive environment directly affect how much our users want to play. We’ve released new expansion packs on a regular basis, and we think that having new content added at relatively short intervals has a positive impact on the health of the game.

However, the biggest reason the game is still doing well is that our users have continued to play the game and support us. They hold their own tournaments, work to teach each other about new decks and ways to play, and give each other advice, all of which we think has really helped people stay interested in the game.

Okano and Ogihara: There’s really a wide variety of Capcom characters. There are martial artists like Ryu (Street Fighter series), but there are also robots like X (Mega Man series), and even lawyers like Phoenix Wright.

While all of those unique traits make those characters appealing, they’re all from very different genres. So, if we just put them all in TEPPEN as they are in their original games, we wouldn’t be able to create a unified world that appeals to players.

That’s why we first decided what we wanted TEPPEN’s base world to feel like, and then, while making sure to preserve what makes each character unique and appealing, made changes to each character as necessary to fit that world.

For example, robots like X are from a very advanced civilization, so from the perspective of someone like Ryu who is from our current day society, it would normally be strange for them to exist. That’s why within TEPPEN, we have them appear as relics from an advanced civilization that perished thousands of years ago.

This is why there’s evidence of degradation and dirt on their bodies—so that you can tell they’ve existed for a very long time. We’ve added similar touches to the other characters appearing in TEPPEN so we can create a unified and appealing world. This process was the hardest part of creating TEPPEN’s world, and something we’ve really put a lot of effort into.

Okano and Ogihara: We touched upon it a little in the previous question, but we’ll explain more in detail here.
We believe that there are two things that are indispensable in creating good card art. First, each individual character must be attractive to the player. This requirement is satisfied by our ability to use well-known characters and games that Capcom has spent years creating.

The second is that all characters appearing within cards and as Heroes create something appealing by contributing to a sense of a unified aesthetic. However, fulfilling this second condition was not easy.

As to why, the characters that appear in TEPPEN were originally created for a wide variety of different game genres such as fighting games, robot action games, survival horror games, simulation games, etc. If we just tried to bring them all into TEPPEN as-is, their uniqueness and appeal would stand out, however—zooming out—the entire thing would seem chaotic and thus not very appealing as a world.

That’s why we modify each character as necessary so they can fit into a world that is both appealing and that has a sense of unity, while taking the utmost care to preserve what makes each character unique and cool. That was our thought process as we aimed to create a world that was engaging but also felt unified.

Ogihara: My favorite is “Juri, Purple Spider” from the “DAY OF NIGHTMARES” card pack. I’ve always been a fan of the character, and this card does an excellent job of showing her off. I also like how its design makes you envision her Feng Shui Engine technique, and how the card effects play into that by exploring for the “Feng Shui Engine” card. Overall, it does a good job of expressing Juri within TEPPEN.

Okano: My favorite is “The Trinity” from the “Adventures of a Tiny Hero” card pack.
Since we started development on the game, one of my goals has been to continue creating fun content that could only happen in TEPPEN.

One large success within those efforts was when Nero (Devil May Cry series) and Felyne (Monster Hunter series) teamed up within the “Adventures of a Tiny Hero” expansion, as I think their adventures did a great job of showing off the originality and unique draw of TEPPEN. And I think the card that best symbolizes all of that is “The Trinity”!

I love the illustration of course, but I also like how the effects of the card increase the more different types of tribes you have on your side of the field. I think this one card manages to express the friendship between Nero and Felyne that has overcome the tribal borders separating humans, demons, and monsters.

Okano and Ogihara: When we begin designing cards, we first consider what kind of setting and feel we want the entire card pack to have.

Then, we think about whether it’s necessary to add a new IP to the game, but ultimately there’s two cases in which new IPs are added. The first is when there’s an IP we actively want to add to the game.
One example of this is the recently announced “30_MINUTE.EXE” card pack, which marks the first inclusion of the Mega Man Battle Network series.

In this case, we thought, “How can we put the Mega Man Battle Network series in TEPPEN in a cool way?” Which led to the pack you see today. The second case is when we’ve already decided on a card pack’s setting and feel and decide to add an IP afterwards that we feel is a good fit.

An example of this is the last card pack, “Demon Dogfight,” where the Three Lords from Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak made their debut in TEPPEN. In this card pack we decided the setting would be that magical beings such as devils and demons were at war with one another.

However, while many of the magical beings were armies and organizations, Morrigan Aensland (Darkstalkers series) was just an individual, and thus we hit a wall where we realized it would be difficult to show her off in a better way than we already had up till that point.

That’s when we decided we could make good use of the imagery of the Three Lords and decided to have the monsters form team pairs with the three devils. This allowed us to create a new, unique experience that can only be found within TEPPEN.

Once we’ve decided the feel of the card pack, we next think about what kind of gameplay we want to provide alongside it. Of course, we make sure the gameplay will be fun, but because TEPPEN is a card game, it’s important we also make sure the gameplay of each card pack is unique as well.

To that end, we consider the keywords, setting, and characters essential to the card pack and then consider creating new abilities. However, it’s not like adding new abilities every time necessarily means the game will become more fun.

It becomes difficult to keep track of all the effects, and the hurdle to starting the game for new users becomes even higher. That’s why for some packs, we choose to use previously introduced effects as the core mechanic but change how the effects are used to make the player experience feel fresh.

Creating new effects that can’t be experienced anywhere outside of TEPPEN and utilizing past effects in ways that make them feel fresh again, while still keeping them in line with the pack’s feel and world is something that remains difficult no matter how many expansions we release.

Okano and Ogihara: In July’s update, we’ll add the “30_MINUTES.EXE” pack to the game, and Mega Man Battle Network characters will make their long-awaited debut. In addition to the new mechanic, we’ve added cards with many different effects to create a new meta, so we hope you’re all excited about it.

In addition, we’ll also be releasing a new “30_MINUTES.EXE” themed event quest for the game’s solo mode, Adventure. It’ll be an event quest set in Den City as it appears in TEPPEN, so we hope you’re looking forward to it. In addition, the “Exchange” will also be added to Adventure.

When it launches it will only sell pre-built decks that come with unique relics, but we think that the chance to obtain pre-built decks will make it easy for new players to pick up and start the game. In future updates, we’re planning to have events where players can undertake quests and gather trade items to trade at the “Exchange.” We’re planning to continue adding new packs, playstyles, and other types of content, so we hope you all continue to enjoy TEPPEN.

Okano and Ogihara: Thank you all very much for supporting TEPPEN up until now. Now that we’re starting our 5th year of TEPPEN, we plan to keep adding not only new gameplay experiences but also new characters that haven’t yet appeared in TEPPEN in a way that gets players excited. We’ll make sure to add more experiences that can only be experienced in TEPPEN, so please look forward to the future!

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