Vanillaware

Vanillaware Ltd.
Native name
ヴァニラウェア有限会社
Vanirawea Yūgen-gaisha
FormerlyPuraguru (2002–2004)
Company typeYūgen gaisha
IndustryVideo games
FoundedFebruary 8, 2002; 22 years ago (February 8, 2002)
Founder
  • George Kamitani
  • Takehiro Shiga
  • Kentaro Ohnishi
Headquarters,
Japan
Key people
George Kamitani (president and game director)
Products
Number of employees
39[1] (2024)
Websitevanillaware.co.jp

Vanillaware Ltd.[a] is a Japanese video game developer based in Osaka. An independent company, it was founded in 2002 under the name Puraguru by George Kamitani, a game developer who had previously worked at Capcom and Atlus, and directed Princess Crown (1997) for the Sega Saturn. Beginning as a small studio developing Fantasy Earth: The Ring of Dominion for Enix, in 2004 the company moved to Osaka, Kansai, and changed its name. Kamitani wanted Vanillaware to create successor projects to Princess Crown, beginning with Odin Sphere.

The company is noted for its use of two-dimensional artwork, with character models having jointed hand-scripted movements similar to Flash animation. Later titles have experimented with layered levels and 2.5D graphics. Kamitani based many of his games on the classic beat 'em up game titles he worked on while at Capcom, which had similarly influenced Princess Crown. Vanillaware debuted with two games in 2007; Odin Sphere, which was delayed by publisher Atlus; and GrimGrimoire, a real-time strategy game for Nippon Ichi Software. They have worked with many different publishers, though most frequently with Atlus.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Company was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).