Shin’ai (親愛) is a third-person narrative game about re-establishing lost family connection, created in cooperation with Ritsumeikan University in Ibaraki, Osaka-fu, Japan.

For 11 weeks, we were able to immerse ourselves in the heart of Kansai, allowing us to discover inspirations to represent in our game.

The player follows the story of Aiko, a Japanese American teenager traveling to rural Japan to reconnect with her grandfather, who runs a local restaurant.

As the story unfolds, Aiko helps restore the restaurant while developing their relationship and learning about her family’s past. Each of the story’s 7 days involves various minigames, such as preparing food, taking photos, and fixing items around the restaurant.

My role on the team was to create level sequences: over the course of the project, I created 2 different level sequences. One acts as a “cinematic” introduction cutscene to Shin’ai, and the other plays when Aiko and Gramps have their first argument.

Model/Rig created by Ian Tschida. Aiko and his animations were created in Maya, with the game itself being created with Unreal Engine 5.

Shin’ai is still in development, so no itch page yet!