Stranger Than Heaven director Mikinobu Abe has revealed how RGG Studio designed the game's Showbiz narrative system and how difficult it was to get right.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Abe said the Showbiz, an entertainment management system requiring the main character, Makoto Daito, to build a business, find sources of inspiration for music, and plan productions as a promoter, "was a real challenge for us."

The director explained that RGG started by asking: what does a promoter actually do? Because "you know what a singer does, and you know what a band does, but you don't exactly know what a promoter does in the music industry," so research began from there.

Abe revealed that "At some point we did have a small rhythm game, but it didn't exactly match the feeling that you're promoting a show," so the team went back to the whiteboard phase to try different things.

"One thing that we noticed is that a promoter is the person who brings in not just the money, but also the inspiration and the whole vision of the show," Abe said. "We thought that's an interesting aspect that we can put into this game."

In Stranger Than Heaven , players can walk around cities and interact with things in the environment, like a grandfather clock or a bonfire, and collect sounds as inspiration for music. Daito can then take these samples and collaborate with a composer to create new music and plan a production for the singer and band.

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