Post 3
2026-07-23
Written by Sen
This is the first post in hopefully a long series of posts about creating a small, experimental video game company that makes JRPG and TRPG inspired games.
My hope is to roll a lot of it myself, mainly for the purpose of learning, but also because I really love old games like Final Fantasy Tactics. I also love newer games like Disco Elysium and Kentucky Route Zero. I want to marry the two concepts in a sense; the idea of a small indie collective creating simple, but weighty-feeling RPGs much like Square Enix has and continues to do.
Baby steps
The first steps I believe are to get something on the screen. That is the first thing any game company does on any project. I already have ideas about the story, the game-loop and other details but I want to first create a vertical slice that embodies the ethos and visual style I have in mind for this series. The engine is going to have to be 3d, even if ultimately the characters and graphics are pixel art. I recently watched a really good documentary on Shovel Knight and Mina the Hollower and how their 8-bit games are actually built on top of 3d engines, the latter on a custom-rolled 3d engine.
The game will also eventually have a job system like Tactics. I want to keep similar typical classes like Dragoon, Thief, Black Mage and Summoner. I want there to also be a passive job that a character can earn XP on to mitigate the need for grinding. I like the idea of special classes for the main character(s).
I like the idea of being able to deeply customize your team and still be successful. I want to be able to have a full team that only uses guns. I want to be able to build an attack heavy team, but also be able to build a team that uses subterfuge.
AI-last philosophy
I want to adopt a philosophy that the collective only uses AI for general googling. No art. No actual code. Example; AI can tell us what are the most popular frameworks for something and give us pros and cons for each one, but it won’t choose the framework and write code for it.