Game

Onmyoji is a flagship game published in 2016 by NetEase, it sources from Baku Yumemakura's series of the same name and has the ISBN 978-7-7979-9973-1.

History

Onmyoji is a game developed and published by internet company NetEase. It was developed by a project team, Project G37, that was part of NetEase's Atlas Studio in the Thunder Fire division of NetEase Games, over the course of 20~24 months, beginning on the September of 2014. The original team consisted of 9 members, which were 3 designers, 4~5 developers, and 1 artist. Project G37 was eventually elevated to become Zen Studio, as a team under the Neptune department 400.

Development

The game uses its in-house engine NeoX, whose various versions can be seen on the login screen. The code is written in Python and C++, and also uses Cocos for the UI. Database is mongodb. Web framework is Django.

Employees associated with the operations include Jin Tao, the chief director of Zen Studio as well as the producer. The chief game planner is Huang Yingwei. A game planner, Zheng Tao, was also one of the founding members, along with the programmer 胡利强. 包子 designed the Omagatoki boss instances.

Elements of the game took inspiration from Touhou project, Touken Ranbu, and Honkai Gakuen 2, but Onmyoji emphasized a Japanese setting aimed toward a wider audience.

Main story was written by Qualia, though 花花 is the dedicated copy writing planner, 大白 also came up with the idea for Onikiri's recollection emaki, and KK seemed to have penned a manhua side story.

Product Team

Artist, 汪汪

Artist, 小爽子

Designer, 山狗

Artist, 叽困

Designer, 小淡

Artist, 大冷

Designer, 包子

Designer, 寒

Creative

The creative team was formerly led by Dai Qifeng, and the creative director since then was Wang Yang. Artists include Nine, Cpieng, Ling, DF, Vv, Gculp, liamoney, 红莲喵喵, May, amongst others. The design of an idea took priority over the artistry, so to realise some employees' designs the art team would also outsource drawing to other artists to complete the design.

Zhang Peng handled production of the anime and manhua.

Additional members include modellers like 小爽子 (Zheng Tianshuang?), 大冷 (Lai Bingchen?), alienbrain, UVee/Ani-X2, 周海波, 刘阳, nxn.

Invited artists include monkeydaly, Huang Jiawei, sheep, pako, amongst others, as seen from the Artist List.

Calligraphy was handled by Miaodian Design. (小)宝瓜 is the merchandise designer, and handled visual design and merchandise creation. Merchandise were made in collaboration with other companies, and some featured the designs of design contests winners, as well as of the artist ASK.

Music

Music was composed by Shigeru Umebayashi. The first OST album was made available on 2016/8/17, the second OST album was made available on 2017/10/10 and the third OST album was made available on 2019/1/02.

Rmoney Chen is a sound designer who handled sound effect design and audio synthesis while 花花 was a copywriter that also managed the recording room.

Finally, an Onmyoji Music Workshop brand was established to run the Onmyojazz x Life, Oriental Music, and Twilight Zone (band) projects.

CG

Various CG videos for the game were produced in-house, in collaboration with other NetEase studios such as TNT, and by outsourced companies such as One&All, Locus, Polygon, 2:10, LOOCreative and Cloud Art assistance.

Finally, Zen began creating parts of the CGs in-house under the Onmyoji Animation Studio brand.

PR

Numerous social media accounts were set up in order to communicate with players and were run by staffers, including the Sweeper and Paper-kun.

黄任鹏 is a senior marketing planner. Jia Haimo is a senior marketing director.

Further, some accounts on Steam were also connected to the dev team, such as 花城大盗, Yanximi, and carinabbisme.

Availability

As part of its global release plan, Onmyoji is gradually becoming available in multiple regions. The Chinese version was the first to be released, and is published by Netease itself. The Taiwan version was released next, and published by Netease's Taiwan branch. The Japanese version is published by Netease's Japan branch. The Korean version is localised and published by Kakao Games. Garena has also licensed and ran the Vietnamese and Thai versions of the game. The English version released for global markets is published by the Hong Kong branch.

Awards

• App Store 10 Best Games of the Year
• Google Play Best of 2017 Most Competitive Game
• Facebook's 2016 Game of the Year Best Mobile Games
• IMGA Best in Category, Best Online Game, Best Aesthetics