Tukoni: Forest Keeper Dev Ties Game's Design to Zelda and Amanita
The interview makes the full version's design case explicit: Dream Operator built out from a free 25-minute prologue into a paid point-and-click adventure, and Furman names the influences behind that step up in scope.
Reporting from 1 source: Game Spark.
Dream Operator creative director Oleksii Furman discussed Tukoni: Forest Keeper in an interview, tracing the point-and-click puzzle adventure's design to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and games by Amanita Design. Furman said the studio chose not to bind the game to a single fixed screen so it could carry richer puzzles, and described the project as an outgrowth of the free Tukoni: Prologue. The PC game released on August 17 and costs 1,050 yen.
Furman, who said he mostly worked on documentaries before, traced the project to 2019, when he wanted to make something offering a short escape from daily life. Development on Tukoni: Prologue began as the COVID-19 pandemic spread, and the hand-drawn forest walk became, in his words, a lifeline during the year everyone was shut indoors.
The team dispersed after the prologue, and Furman said a full version was not certain at the time. Player reviews changed that. People played the free game, which ran about 25 minutes, with their families and asked where the story went next. Furman treats that response as the reason the full version exists.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.