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Kyojin no Doshin (Doshin the Giant) is a game developed by Param and published by Nintendo for the Gamecube. The genre is "exotic action". As of the writing of this play guide, the game is available only as a Japanese "import". The game contains a fair amount of Japanese text and speech. Most of these cover how to play the game, so this guide is in a large part a re-composition of that information, designed to help the player overcome the language barrier and play the game smoothly.
The Gamecube version is a remake of the N64-DD version, which was released in 1999. It is said that the Gamecube version is a vast improvement over the 64-DD version, especially in the graphics department. I myself, like most people (...), do not have a 64-DD.
Although Doshin is really more a 'toy' than a 'game', and the 'game play' per se may even be too simple and a bit monotonous (if the player concentrates on completing the stated goal of the game), it is really a rather impressive piece of software. The player is immersed in the exotic environment with the beautiful graphics, and the sounds and music, although average by themselves, fit the atmosphere very well. It is not a very challenging game, but it is a very nice and beautiful environment with a lot of interesting details for the player to toy with (even though those details often have little to do with completing the stated goal). The two contrasting aspects of the giant are also quite interesting: it allows the player to unleash his destructive instincts and blow things up, when he wants to take a moment away from being the friendly helper. The game also has its intriguing way of rewarding both kinds of behavior. Overall, this game is a worthy addition to one's Gamecube library, for its excellent style and innovative ideas.
This play guide is based on the Japanese manual, my own observations when playing the game, and a few tips I read off some Japanese bulletin boards.
The player becomes the giant in the legends of a tropical island. Doshin (named after the rumbling sound he makes when walking) appears at dawn and disappears as the sun sets.
Your primary goal in the game is to help the villages develop. When a village is fully developed, the villagers build a monument according to the cultural mix in the village. The ultimate goal is to build 16 different monuments.
Although the game has a stated goal, it is not the only way to enjoy the game. Unlike Pikmin (which is another excellent game, in its way), there is no time limit to force you to complete the monuments in a hurry, nor do you get any bonus or saved scores for completing the game quickly, so you can take your time and play the game at your own pace. The game world is very detailed, and it is fun to look at and interact with the people and the nature. Basically, you are allowed and encouraged to do whatever you feel like doing. Thus, although I am writing a strategy guide, I tend to explain how to accomplish things the player wants to do, rather than dictating how the player should play this game.
Most of the time, you will be playing as Doshin, the love giant. He can pick up and move many objects, and can help the people in many ways. However, you can change into Jashin the hate giant any time at the touch of a button. Jashin is a powerful creature of destruction, and has generally better abilities than Doshin.
Note: Doshin can move a very small distance horizontally when jumping. This is sometimes useful towards preventing falling.
Press "Start/Pause" during the game to open the sub-menu. This also gives you an enlarged view of the map, and displays the current number of hearts and skulls you have.
When a major event occurs (such as the founding of a new village, the construction of a monument, or a natural disaster), you'll hear a fanfare, and the map appears, with the location marked with an "X". You can press "Start/Pause" to open the sub-menu and choose the top item to zoom in and take a look at the event spot.
Initially, at the title screen, the main menu contains three items:
The options menu contains three items:
After you have played and saved the game, more items are added to the main menu:
At the end of each day, the game is saved to the memory card automatically. You can also save the game during play by choosing "save and quit" from the sub-menu. You load and resume the game by choosing "start game" in the main menu.
The save game file takes up 40 blocks.
Each game day is about 30 minutes of real time. At dawn, you appear next to the "divine pin" prehistoric monument. The divine pin marks your starting location at dawn every day; Doshin can pick it up and move it to another location. You always appear as your initial, smallest size. When you arrive, the people are still sleeping.
During the day, the sun sails across the sky, with corresponding lighting and shadow effects. (You can tell the current time from the shadows.) At noon, the people take a break and sleep, or they may actually eat lunch if livestock is available.
As dusk approaches, it becomes darker and it may be difficult to see your surroundings. (This is a realistic feature. The islanders don't have electricity. We should be thankful that we do.) The people take another break for dinner, and then they come and wave you goodbye. You slow down, and eventually become unable to move. The day ends.
After auto-saving, the game returns to the title screen.
There is no limit to the number of days you may spend on the island. You are not required to complete the monuments in the fewest number of days. You may freely take your time and appreciate the many details in the beautiful game world.
A big part of the game is to interact with the people on the island. The people live together in villages.
The people portray their desires to you as desire icons. There are five kinds of desires:
The "raise land" and "lower land" desires are not to be always taken literally. All they really want is a patch of level land at the spot. Sometimes it is better for you to look at the terrain and decide for yourself how you are going to level the land. You can use the C stick to lower the camera angle for a better perspective. For example, if many villagers stand all around the center square and ask for the perimieter to be lowered, the best thing you should do is to raise the center of the square instead.
By filfilling the desires of the people, you get hearts from them and help the village to grow. However, you are not required to do so. You may play the game any way you want. It's all up to you.
Each village has a center square. It is the location where the monument will be eventually constructed. The center square does not need to be supported by trees in order for the monument to be built.
The center square is colored according to the current cultural mix in the village. (But if you obscure the color by planting trees around the square, it can become difficult to see.) When the village has reached a certain level of development, colored flags will be raised, again according to the cultural mix.
The development of a village starts with leveling the center square. Then, the villagers will start to build houses and farming structures. After enough of these have been built (the number apparently depends on the number of different tribes in the village), they will build two large buildings. Finally, they will build a monument.
The monument is the goal of the development of a village. Upon the completion of the monument, the village has reached the final extent of its growth.
There are four tribes of people on the island. Different tribes are distinguished by the color of their clothing.
When you bring a person from another tribe into a village, they will conduct cultural exchange. The village will then build a new type of monument.
The cultural mix in a village is defined by the mix of people currently in the village. You can undo a cultural exchange by removing the presence of a tribe from the village.
As the final stage of village development, the village builds a monument. The type of monument built depends on the cultural mix in the village. You can verify which types you have built on the monument list accessible through the sub-menu. There are two versions of each type of monument: a normal version and a hate version. The version built depends on the emotion of the village towards the giant. Generally, the normal version looks pleasant, while the hate version looks spiky. The two versions count as the same type towards the object of the game, but if you build both, both will be listed in the monument list. Besides the monument, the second large building and the decorative fences around the monument also have two versions.
Monument construction needs to be complemented with a flower. The villagers will show the flower desire icon; hurry and give them a flower. If you fail to give a flower during monument construction, a tasteless monument will be built; that does not count towards the object of the game.
To make a flower, you have to collect 7 trees. When you set down a tree and there are 6 or more other trees within a certain radius, a flower will be created. In addition, all the trees will be reborn as new, fresh trees, plus you get one extra tree as a bonus. However, you can make only one flower in the entire world. If you try to make a second flower, the new one will wither immediately. After giving a flower to a village, you can make another one. A flower will wither quickly if put on barren land (outside the range of trees).
Sometimes when you make or put a flower at a certain medium distance from a monument construction site, the flower disappears quickly, but actually it has been counted as being given to the monument, even though you do not see the beautiful effects of the flower hovering above the monument site. It may appear that the flower has withered, but if you watch carefully, it can be distinguished by the glowing light underneath the flower as it disappears. However, this works only sometimes, and sometimes you will end up with a tasteless monument. Thus, it is suggested that you do not make or put a flower at a medium distance from the center square (i.e. 'in' the village): either make it 'outside' the village, or put it right besides the center square. (I don't know whether to call this a feature or a bug.)
As long as a village has a completed monument, it will not build another one until the existing monument is destroyed.
You can build 15 different monuments with different cultural mixes. After having built all 15, the next monument you build will automatically be the final monument.
To start a new village, first you need some land. The location should not be too close to existing villages. Then you need to bring (at least) two people, which must contain a man and a woman. (A village needs population to prosper ...) It doesn't matter whether they are from the same tribe or not. If the conditions are right, they will start a new village. But if the location is too close to an existing village, the people will try to return to the village instead of starting a new one.
In order for the village to propser, trees will be needed. Thus ideally the location should have some trees. It is best to have at least 7, so that you can make more.
There are several ways in which structures and monuments can be destroyed. The obvious one is to change into Jashin and blow them up.
The people are also quite fragile. They will be killed if you step on them, or if you change into Jashin and smash them flat. When a person is killed, he becomes a lotus flower. On the next day, the lotus flower will become a tree. If you pick up a lotus flower, when you release it, it will be carried some distance by the wind.
Important: a lotus flower is different from the flower which is made from trees and required for monuments. It is futile to try to give a lotus flower to a monument, for it won't work.
Once a village has built a monument, there are few material benefits for maintaining it. On the other hand, there are material benefits for destroying the village, besides getting skulls and growing big for wreaking havoc. By destroying the monument, you create the opportunity to build a new one. When houses are destroyed and rebuilt, you have another chance to find new boxes under them. When people are killed, you get some trees; the people will be easily regenerated, anyway.
It needs to be pointed out that, while the player may get material benefits for destroying a village, he is by no means required to do so, for Doshin is not a game where material benefits are everything. If you want the material benefits or if you feel the need to unleash some destructive instincts, by all means go ahead. But if you feel attached to your village and want to maintain it, there is nothing against your doing so, even though you are spending time and effort to recycle the trees for little 'material' benefits in return. It is your game, you are the player, and you may play the game in any way as you see fit.
If you completely destroy every structure in a village and kill all the villagers, the village will be exterminated and erased from the map. You can found a new village at the location - and no one (except yourself) will remember what has happened there!
You can turn the map on and off using the Z button, or you can press Start/Pause to view a larger version.
Please refer to the list of map symbols on page 27 of the Japanese manual. The symbols are, in order:
For the giant to grow big, you need to absorb the emotions from the people. You grow bigger every time you collect 21 hearts or 21 skulls. When you get hearts or skulls, they go to the "Doshin counter" around the screen. When the counter is completely filled with all hearts or all skulls, you grow bigger. But if the counter is filled with a mixture of hearts and skulls, further hearts and skulls you pick up will begin to overwrite one another.
You earn hearts and skulls from the people. So in order to get them, you need to act in their presence: you won't get hearts for planting trees in a village in advance, and you won't get skulls for blowing up a village when nobody is watching. You also need to be close enough to the people in order to absorb their emotions.
Hearts represent the love and thankfulness the people feel towards you. You get them mainly by fulfilling desire icons.
Skulls represent the hate and sorrow the people feel towards you. You get them mainly by destroying villages and monuments, and by scaring the people in your Jashin form.
In general, it is easier to grow big by collect skulls than by collecting hearts.
When you are bigger, you can lift and carry larger structures. Growing bigger for the first time every day is probably the most important, because it allows you to lift houses to find boxes. When you become bigger, you can also move faster, and you can walk on steeper slopes without falling. You also gain higher efficiency in raising and lowering land, and when you have grown bigger 4 times, you can press the X+Y buttons to level the ground easily.
When you are small, you will not crush structures by running into them, but instead you will bounce off. However, when you are big, you will crush a structure if you step on it, and you can also easily step on and kill people if you are careless. You can move with sliding feet by pushing the control stick slightly; this way, you will push away things in your path, without crushing them. Regardlss of your size, you will not crush livestock and wild animals.
While it is convenient to be big, the game is perfectly playable even in your smallest size. You can still carry trees, people, and flowers, and you can raise and lower land, though at a slower rate.
After a day ends, you start again as your smallest size on the next morning.
Each village remembers its collective feeling towards the giant, depending on how the giant treated the villagers. If you keep helping the villagers, they will remember you favorably. They may think of you as a friend and as god, and you may get hearts just for meeting them. If you wreak havoc in the village, the villagers will remember you with hatred, and you may get skulls just for meeting them.
The criteria for affecting the emotion of a village should be similar to those for getting hearts and skulls, but apparently they are not exactly the same. One factor which may be easy to miss is that if you kidnap a villager and carry him away from the village, this will shift the emotion towards hate significantly. (Because you are moving away from the village, you do not receive the skulls, so it may be easy to miss this.)
The emotion of the village decides which version of monument it will build, although this doesn't affect your progress towards clearing the game. It also affects the second of the large buildings and the decorative fences around the monument. When the emotion of a village switches from love to hate or vice versa, the villagers will pull down and rebuild all three structures mentioned here.
The island is a beautiful place. Birds fly in the sky, and fish swim in the sea. The birds sometimes rest in trees, and they swoop down to the sea to catch fish. Doshin can pick up birds and fish.
Trees are absolutely needed for the fertility of the land. The green energy from a tree turns the area around it into grassland. When the tree is removed, the area immediately turns into barren land. The villagers cannot build on barren land. If left on barren land, a structure (except a monument) will gradually decline.
A tree has limited longevity. It will wither in about 5 days, though one near or in the sea can live longer. You can recycle withering trees in the same way as making a flower: by gathering together 7 or more trees.
As the villages develop, they are struck from time to time by natural disasters. A disaster (except an earthquake) always originates near a village, and (with some exceptions) heads for its center square. Each type of disaster tends to occur in certain terrain types, and some tend to start in barren land. It is possible to prevent the disaster in advance by shaping the terrain (to make mountains and rivers) and by planting trees. It is even possible to shut out disasters entirely. I would not spoil this; I'll let the player have the fun of figuring out the connections between disasters and terrain on his own.
When a disaster occurs, you may rush to the scene and fight the disaster, but you are not required to do so. You will probably want to fight it if the village is building a monument, but if the village has already completed its monument, you may want to deliberately let the disaster run its course, because you get material benefits when a village is destroyed. You may shape the terrain to prevent disasters in advance, or you may even do the opposite and shape the terrain so that disasters attack every day.
You sometimes find boxes under houses. (You can find the box only by lifting the house as Doshin, not by destroying the house.) Also, every day at noon, a special box (with a "?" mark on it) is dropped from the sky. Here are the common contents in boxes:
Reportedly, sometimes a special box may contain something rare (perhaps new animals?), but I myself haven't come upon one. According to the in-game instructions, you can go on a treasure hunt by taking along a villager who is playing. (I don't really understand how to do this, so I haven't found anything.) The manual mentions larger boxes, but I haven't seen one either.
To get boxes, lift houses. You can carry a box to another place before opening it; this is particularly useful for boxes containing trees or people. If you want a village to build a monument with its current cultural mix, you should avoid opening a box containing people in or near the village until said monument has been built.
You can open a box by touching it. But if you do that with a box containing people, you may be stepping on the people as they appear. Thus, for a box with people (or a special box), a better way of opening the box would be to throw something at it. You will not crush the people even if you throw a tree or a building on them.
I haven't found boxes under large buildings or farming structures.
Spoiler alert!
This section contains questions and answers concerning some (a bit) advanced strategy issues. Please be aware of possible spoilers.
Q1: Doshin walks too slowly, especially when crossing the sea. How do I move faster?
A: Walking is slow. Walking in deep water is even slower, because of water resistance. There are several ways you can speed up movement:
Q2: I can't give the flower in time! Help!
A: The time can become very tight if you start to collect trees after seeing the desire icon. There are several ways you can make giving the flower easier:
Q3: I want to destroy the monument so as to build a new one, but I don't want the entire village to hate me. How can I accomplish that?
A: If you change into Jashin and attack the monument, you'll send fear and hatred into the heart of every villager. Fortunately, there are several other ways of destroying a monument:
Q4: The village hates me! How can I mend the relations?
A: There are several ways of getting hearts, but the easiest way is to fulfill desires. However, in a well-developed village, most villagers will just be playing and will not have any desires. Well, if they don't have desires, you can create desires by depriving them of what they need. For example, you can take away some trees in the village, and you will get hearts for returning them.
The most efficient way of getting hearts is to fiddle with the center square. If you raise or lower the middle of the square or (when the village is ready to build a monument) toss an obstacle onto it, the entire village will stand around the center square and ask for you to fix the problem. Thus, if you want to change a hate monument into the normal version, an efficient way is to sink it into the water. You will get lots of hearts for raising the land back.
Obviously, in addition to improving the emotion of the village, these tricks can also be used to grow big quickly.
Q5: I'm not growing as big as I like. How do I grow bigger?
A: If you play 'normally' as Doshin, helping the villagers only when they show desire icons, it is somewhat hard to grow very big. There are ways of growing big quickly:
Q6: The village hates me for no apparent reason. Why?
A: The most likely reason for this is that you have been kidnapping the villagers.
Q7: How do I take a nap?
A: The conditions have not been completely verified, but apparently, you need to just stand and do nothing for a while, at an open spot (flat and without trees) away from the villages. If the space is not large enough, you'll just sit down.
Q8: What happens after I build the final monument?
A: The game plays a movie; I will not spoil its contents. After that, you'll be on a strange map. Hurry and give the villagers a flower. You have only one chance; if you miss it and the villagers build a tasteless monument, they will not build a new one even if you destroy it. For this reason, you will not save game on this map. If you choose "save and quit" or if the day ends, you will start over (on this map). After they build the monument, you will see the staff list. After that, a new item "new map" is added to the main menu. You can choose from three new maps, in addition to the original one. (Tip: on the "Planet Banchou" map, try making a mountain.)
Q9: What is there beyond the edge of the map?
A: Go and see it youself. But save the game beforehand.
Q10: When I lift a monument, there is an invisible box under it. What does it do?
A: I don't know. The box seems to be always empty. It is perhaps a programming trick or a (harmless) bug.
Q11: You say that it is common, but I don't see boxes with the picture of a tree on them, although I sometimes get trees from special boxes. Is this a bug?
A: It seems to be a feature that you rarely (about 1 in 50 or so) find boxes with the picture of a tree under houses on the basic map, because you already have an abundance of trees everywhere. When you play the new maps (after having cleared the game), you will find them more often.
Q12: I want to take a break from building monuments. What are some silly things I can do?
A: Anything you can think of. Just try things. Here are a few ideas:
© March 2002 Alan KWAN Shiu Ho
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