Creative Director & Founder Soulforge Games 2020 — 2022 PC

KAKUSEI

Original IP Action Horror Systems Design Founder Pre-production

The Challenge

KAKUSEI is original IP — built from a blank page. As Creative Director and Founder, the challenge was not just defining what the game is, but designing an architecture rigorous enough to guide a small team toward something coherent, original, and producible.

The player promise: you are a living weapon entering a trap. You should feel powerful, feel threatened, and survive through momentum. Every system decision was evaluated against that promise before anything entered production.

Design Decisions

Momentum as the core loop primitive. Movement → kill → resource → movement. The loop never stops — stopping is how you die. This drove every combat system decision: weapon feel, enemy behaviour, environment density, and resource placement.
Adaptive AI as the horror mechanic. The Synth Parasites aren't scripted — they observe player patterns and adapt. This makes the player's own tactics a resource: repeating successful strategies degrades them over time, sustaining dread across the full experience without authored jump-scare events.
Progression tied to AI defeat patterns, not XP. Traditional XP curves reward grinding and break horror pacing. Instead, abilities unlock by defeating specific adaptive AI configurations — making progression feel earned through mastery rather than time.
IP documentation as a production tool. Before any prototype work, I defined the player promise, tone document, lore layer, and core loop spec. These documents changed decisions in every sprint. Documentation earned its existence.
Prototype scope as a risk-retirement question. Pre-alpha scope was defined by one question: what must we prove before building more? Combat momentum, Synth Parasite AI adaptivity, and player agency in encounter exit — those three. Everything else was deferred.

Outcome

In Development

KAKUSEI's pre-alpha prototype validated all three core risk questions. The momentum loop, adaptive AI, and encounter exit agency all performed above threshold in internal playtests. The IP architecture — player promise, loop hierarchy, progression model — has been stable across the prototype and remains the production blueprint.

KAKUSEI is in active development at Soulforge Games.