Kurayami

Kurayami was a game pitch and scenario designed by Goichi Suda, with the intention of writing and directing it with Shinji Mikami as producer. Although the original game was never created, its attempted development had long-lasting effects on the lives and works of Suda, Mikami and executive producer Yoshiro Kimura.

Kurayami was to be an action-adventure game based on Franz Kafka's novel The Castle. Like the novel, it would follow a man in a European-style village attempting to make his way to the castle in the center. The man, G (analogous to the novel's K), would start the game shirtless and weaponless and over the course of interacting with the inhabitants of the village acquire equippable weapons and clothing, and defend himself using light against dark beings referred to as "neighbors".

American company Electronic Arts (EA) claimed to be interested in the game concept and made a deal to publish it, offering a 10 million dollar budget. However, as development progressed, EA continually scrutinized Suda's ideas and rejected them for not being understandable. Suda continually wrote new scenarios over and over until his fifth version was finally accepted. That script was developed into the released game Shadows of the Damned, but Suda was no longer the director for this version. Despite this, EA labeled the released game "A Suda51 Trip" and the involvements of Suda, Mikami, and composer Akira Yamaoka were heavily promoted far above the actual director Massimo Guarini.

Due to the continual rewriting of the game scenario, by the end of development Suda had essentially planned out five different games. As such, elements from these plans have made their way into numerous other projects by Suda, Grasshopper, and other involved staff, as have the experiences that came from working on the game. Besides Shadows itself, Black Knight Sword, Kurayami Dance, and Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes all used scenarios and elements planned for Kurayami; Travis Strikes Again and No More Heroes III also both have explicit and implicit commentary on Kurayami's development and working under EA, particularly in the form of antagonist Damon Riccitiello, who is based off of the CEO of EA during this development period. No More Heroes III was also planned to feature further Shadows of the Damned-related content that did not make it in. Additionally, one of Suda's five scenarios was printed in the Suda51 Complete Book.

As Kimura and his staff, who would later form Onion Games, worked at Grasshopper during the period of Shadows and Black Knight Sword, elements of those games also appear in Onion's title Black Bird. Similar to Damon, Onion's game Dandy Dungeon also features the CEO of a AAA games company as its antagonist, and follows a protagonist who wants to break away from the AAA industry and return to smaller-scale game development. Kimura with Onion, Suda with the restructured post-GungHo Grasshopper, and Mikami with Tango would all form new smaller studios in the years during and following Kurayami's attempted development.

At Tango, Mikami's ideas for games were also rejected and modified by their new owners Zenimax Media. The result of this development and their first released game, The Evil Within, features a difficulty mode named KURAYAMI in which the game world is covered in darkness.