Save Me Mr Tako: Tasukete Tako-San is a Game Boy-style platformer that tells the story of a helpful octopus caught up in a war between his people and humanity. Though the game was delisted from all digital stores two years after its release, it is set to return with Save Me Mr Tako: Definitive Edition this May.

Save Me Mr Tako: Definitive Edition marks the re-release of a game which began development all the way back in 2014, after the Game Boy's 25th anniversary. Game Rant sat down with Mr Tako's creator Christophe Galati to talk about the game's delisting, the inspiration behind its story, and the challenges recreating the Game Boy experience in the modern era.

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Save Me Mr Tako was heavily inspired by Game Boy era platformers. What were your favorite platformers from that time and how did they shape your game?

Growing up I had the chance to be able to play many games from the GB era as one of my big brothers is a game collector. In terms of platformers, Tako was mostly inspired by Kirby Dream Land 2 for the world hubs structure and overall physics, Metroid II and games like Castlevania or Kid Icarus for the level design, how to use the various hat powers to explore new areas. But the game isn’t inspired only by platformers, and two other huge influences are Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Final Fantasy Legend for the way to tell the story and dungeon design. For me the Game Boy is more than just an aesthetic and the goal with Tako was to recreate the mood and weirdness of this era. I believe that I succeeded with that goal as each player tells me that Tako reminds them of a different game. There are also many references/Easter eggs to other classics, including modern indie games.

Mr Tako is a peaceful octopus caught in a war between humanity and an underwater octopus kingdom. What inspired that story?

I’m a huge JRPG player, my main goal when designing a game is to tell a story. I got the initial idea for Tako when I ate Takoyaki for the first time. I had a vision of an octopus character with a sword saving people. I wanted to play with the octopus cliche to talk about tolerance. I’m very inspired by mythology, especially the Ancient Greek one that I used to study. I wanted to create a cohesive world, how it came to exist, how it functioned and evolved before the start of the game. The universe of Tako is unbalanced, which led to the war between octopuses and humans.

You’ll follow its characters in their quest of understanding the roots of the world itself. What seems to be a cute little game is in fact way deeper and darker. Otherwise my two main references for the story are Final Fantasy VI and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

Save Me Mr Tako is packed full of memorable characters. Who are your personal favorites, and where did they come from?

Thank you, glad you liked my characters! In Tako there are no real “bad guys” as the world itself is not working. My goal was to create a diverse cast on both the human and octopus sides, to show how they are fighting for what they see as good, how the new generation can rise up to challenge the order and build a better world. My favorite characters are Azuria, Evan, and Enkidd. Azuria is the octopus princess, she was inspired by Nausicaa for her curiosity, how she searched for a solution in her past to protect her people. She is a strong figure.

Evan is the prince of the kingdom of Sarona and was inspired by the historical figure of Frederick the Great, as he was also raised to enter the military but is more into arts, he grows a lot after meeting Tako. Enkidd is kind of inspired by Kefka from Final Fantasy VI and was the last character of the main cast I added, to show how the need for recognition can make you lose touch with who you are. I love all the characters and I can’t wait for more people to discover them.

What were the biggest challenges you ran into as a pixel artist while developing the game?

I don’t have an artistic background and learned pixel art by myself, at first by ripping Pokemon sprites for my RPG Maker games and then doing my own custom characters along the years. I used pixel art a lot for game school projects or jams, but Tako is by far the biggest amount of graphic work I did in my life. It was the first time I played with the Game Boy limitations and it was a very nice exercise, using a limited palette helped me to learn shading and shadows. I had fun making the animations of the octopuses and small enemies, but for biggest sprites as bosses I was very scared and afraid to start sometimes for a few days.

I tried to follow a rule for the players to know what you can interact or walk on by having a black outline, and what is nice or bad like the enemies with how their eyes are shaped. The game scale is way bigger than the one of the original Game Boy games so it was hard to make each place look unique even though I reuse a lot of sprites. Not using any scaling or rotation was also a challenge in terms of animation but it also helped increase the Game Boy vibe.

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Q) How did you balance staying true to the limits of the Game Boy era with the demands of modern gamers?

Balancing tradition and modernity is one of the parts where I did not excel with in the original version of the game. I tried to respect the Game Boy spirit too much in the design department. I never intended to make a hard game as I wanted players to enjoy the story, but after years of working on it on my own I couldn’t feel the difficulty anymore. I became too stuck up in my own references. For example, Mario has one-hit death when he doesn't have a mushroom, so I did not question why Tako also had one hit death when not wearing a hat.

Retro games expect you to build a mental map to remember places and characters, I basically expected the same, but nowadays we all play way more games so it’s hard to remember details like this, even more so if you stop playing the game for a while. It led to many people getting lost in Tako and dropping the game. Not all aspects of the design of the game were dated as the overall physics is way more fluid than one of a GB game, but the animations and graphics helped making it still feel as one. I still believe I managed to do a faithful celebration of this era, but there were a lot of adjustments and quality of life features missing, which justify the existence of the Definitive Edition.

Q) What are the changes you're most excited for returning fans to see when Save Me Mr Tako: Definitive Edition comes out this May?

The main goal of the Definitive Edition was to make the game more polished and accessible to a wider audience so more people can enjoy its story. Now that time has passed, I was able to improve systems I was afraid to touch near the end of development, including the camera, game physics, the hat and ink system. I spent a lot of time rebalancing the enemies' AI and level design to avoid difficulty spikes and added more feedback to the bosses. All these subtle changes make the game more fair than before.

I also took the time to add new quality of life features including an auto palette option to make the color change depending on the place you are, reworked difficulty modes including a new heart mode without the one hit death (you can also change the difficulty as much as you want in the octopus village), as well as a hint system to remind players where to go next when they go search for a hat. There is also a sound system to listen to the soundtrack! The list of changes is long so I won’t explain them all here, but I’m excited for people to experience the game again. Hopefully all these changes will make it go from hidden gem to indie classic.

Q) Save Me Mr Tako has been unavailable since it was last taken off the eShop. What are you takeaways from that experience as an indie developer?

The game was published for two years and I was not allowed to patch it, which was frustrating as I agreed with the feedback it received. It took time but we managed to part ways, leading to the game being delisted from the eShop. Because I’m not legally allowed to exploit the original version (which doesn’t exist anymore), I have to republish the game as a new release. I wish I would have been able to patch the original version or make a special discount to help players who own the game to repurchase it but it was not possible. This situation gave me motivation to improve the game even more than my original patches to make it worth a repurchase, leading to this new Definitive Edition. I’m glad the game can finally be improved and that new doors will open for Tako.

Q) Do you have any plans for Mr Tako in the future?

Save Me Mr Tako is my first game as an indie, I had a lot of ideas for it that now have a chance to happen. As I’m working with Limited Run Games to bring the game back to consoles, once we are done with the digital version we will prepare for the physical release. We have to prepare for the Japanese release of the game too. I hope that I’ll be able to make merch at some point and maybe other ports, but I can’t announce or confirm anything yet. I guess it will depend on the game's reception, I hope players and press will give it a second chance.

Q) What are some of the biggest lessons you learned developing Save Me Mr Tako, and how are you applying them to your upcoming game, "Himitsu Project"?

Tako opened the doors of the game industry to me. It made me grow and learn a lot during the 4 years of development and even more now that I took the time to fix my design mistakes. I feel much more confident in my skills entering this new development phase, knowing what I did and didn’t do right the first time. I started to work on Himitsu Project in 2019 when I spent 5 months in Kyoto in an artist residency called Villa Kujoyama. This amazing opportunity really fueled me to define the basis of the project, but due to the situation Tako was in I wasn’t able to move on. So I’m excited to now be able to fully focus on this ARPG and go to the next level as an indie.

I take more care of myself and won’t crunch as I did with Tako as now I’m full time indie. I also gathered a team of really talented artists to support me on the project, which this time is a tribute to the Game Boy Advance. It will be a long road but I’m excited. We are working on a vertical slice demo which will hopefully help us get the funding to enter full production. You can follow the development of the game on my Patreon, I can’t wait to share more about the game.

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Save Me Mr Tako: Definitive Edition releases May 5 on Nintendo Switch and on Steam.

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