Solo developer Matt Sharp started his game studio, Momiji Studios, to make turn-based role-playing games. After his initial two games that followed the concept of a classic dark turn-basedRPGunder theLucid Awakeningtitle, he ventured into the unknown.Video Game Fableswas his first creation as a full-time indie developer and offers a light-hearted and funny storyline, intriguing setting, unorthodox combat mechanics, and character building with special resources.
The players enter a world of a seemingly regular role-playing game. However, the script goes haywire as the princess decides he doesn’t want to put on the usual show. The game follows the adventures of the princess Aru and his two companions in a paused RPG world. The combat is turn-based and includes funny special attacks, like Nate hitting enemies with a frying pan. However, the game also comes with more serious improvements, including a new take on the round timer, better status effects, and completely reimagined critical hits. The same goes for character building, it has been revamped to be more accessible and offer better on-the-fly customization. Game Rant talked to Sharp about his roots in game development, the meta-story, theresurgence of turn-based RPGs, the complex experience system, and much more.The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
RELATED:Switch Exclusive Co-Op Simulation RPG Fae Farm Announced
Q: Let’s start with you and Momiji Studios. Can you tell us about your history in game development?
A: Yeah. I have been playing games since I was a kid. My parents told me I was playingSuper Mario Bros.on the NES when I was three years old. So, I’ve always been a gamer, and what really makes a good game developer is someone who loves games and is passionate about them. I like to say that my game development started by playing games when I was a little kid.
I eventually found RPG Maker. I came across it kind of randomly. I foundRPG Maker and realized you can just make games. Being a game developer was not really an unrealistic goal, but it had so much attached to it. Like you had to go to college, you had to learn programming, you had to learn so much stuff. But when I found RPG Maker, I realized it’s not that hard to make games, necessarily. There are tools out there.
So I started messing around with that and made a game calledLucid Awakening, which never really came anywhere outside of the RPG Maker community. But I was just proud to have finished a game from start to finish. I think that was a big milestone. I always tell people that. I used to tell my students that when I taught game development. Just go make something. Make the most garbage small game, just finish something. So I started working on that and eventually made a sequel,Lucid Awakening 2. And that was my first Steam game. So that was a big milestone for me.
I messed around with some mobile development, and eventually, I started teaching game development at Wilmington University in Delaware. I was there for around four and a half years, and kinda in the middle of that, I started working onVideo Game Fables. I would say, it’s kinda been at least a concept for maybe four or five years now. I didn’t start really developing it until 2 to 3 years ago. Then I started full-time development essentially.
Q: Let’s move straight toVideo Game Fables. Can you describe what kind of game it is?
A: Yeah, it’s a light-hearted RPG, and it has a unique setting. It’s set inside an RPG game world that’s abandoned and hasn’t had a player in decades. So,the game has some parodyand satire, but it doesn’t rely only on parody and satire. I feel like a problem with some satire and parody games is that they kind of throw a reference in front of you and don’t have a punchline to it. So it’s like this game is like another game, and that’s all it comes to. So I wanted to make something light-hearted and fun becauseLucid Awakeningwas a pretty dark, traditional JRPG story.
So my idea from the beginning was, what are these characters that are put on this RPG script? If you think of each game as a script that these actual characters inside the world put on for the player and the player is seen as some kind of a deity. What are these characters outside of that? Like what would happen if the player stopped playing. Would the world keep on going, would the characters have lives outside that, would they have hobbies, would they age, would they keep going? So that was the concept from the start. Yes, it’s set inside of a cliché RPG, but that is not what you are playing. You are seeing what those actual characters are like. So that was the concept.
I think it’s a very exciting concept that hasn’t really been done. There have been similar things like some people havecompared it toWreck-It Ralph, where you see these game characters living their lives a little bit. But I think it’s something that hasn’t really been explored much in gaming, so I think it has a really unique setting. And that’s what I really wanted to explore, and through that, I can make a lot of funny, crazy stuff happen. I love making people laugh, so that was kind of my goal.
Q: The game is very story-driven. Can you talk about the main storyline?
A: So it starts off with a very brief glimpse of what happened the last time a player played this game, and you’ll see the world get paused. It’s an unspecified amount of time ago, could be decades, who knows how long it was. And then you start at the beginning of a new cycle, where you are coming in as the new player. You are seeing this RPG start, the characters are putting on the script again for you. And then, everything is going according to plan, everyone is coming out of retirement to do this script for you. The princess decides she’s bored and doesn’t want to do this, so she turns sideways and walks outside the prison gate.
That starts this extremely chaotic and insane chain of events, where basically the entire script is ruined. The king is kidnapped along with the villain by someone calling herself the Forsaken Princess. Kind of the mystery is who is this Forsaken Princess, why is she kidnapping a castle and the king? It’s one of those things, where you can kind of put the pieces together as you go, but it gets more explicit later on, explaining who she is, why she’s doing this, and what her motivations are. Then it’s up to the princess, Aru, an NPC, Nate, and the villain’s son, Tater, to figure out who this Forsaken Princess is, get back the castle, get the king back, and get the villain back. Get things back to normal. From there, things go completely nuts. You meet a lot of characters that used to be bosses in this RPG script. They are older, they are out of shape, they are retired. So it’s pretty exciting because you get to see this RPG world from that perspective.
RELATED:Disney Action-RPG Mirrorverse Gets New Trailer
Q: One of the main characters, if not the main character, that you play as is Aru, the princess. It is reminiscent of a combination of Princess Peach and maybe Princess Bean from the TV show Disenchantment. Are there any TV shows or movies, in addition to games, that inspired you?
A: Umm, not necessarily. She’s just made to be this stereotypical princess like you said. She’s obviouslyinspired by Princess Peach. I actually never thought of Princess Bean from Disenchantment, but that’s actually a very good comparison. She doesn’t want any part in this stuff. She’s honestly kind of like me. If you know me, I’m very impatient and I can get irritable when someone takes too long to do something, beating around the bush, or trying to make me do something I don’t want to do. It’s not the most redeeming quality, but I’m being honest about it, at least. So a little bit of inspiration from myself and my less desirable traits.
Q: The in-game world is not exactly a typical game world, right?
A: Yeah, so like I mentioned earlier, it feels familiar because this is an NES RPG essentially. It is the characters that live inside of this world that create an NES RPG. So it feels somewhat familiar to you, but like I said you are experiencing this when everything is very aged, everyone is really out of shape, and the world is chaotic now because the script gets completely thrown off. So you encounter some things that feel like, yeah, this could have been an RPG dungeon at one point. But you see that things have changed.
There are also cool things like, you’ll see parts of the world that you never actually go to. It sounds like not a feature, but it actually is. You might see a dungeon in a swamp, and you’ll actually never go there because you don’t have a reason to. Instead, you end up going to the boss’s house, and you have to actually help babysit her grandkids. She used to be avicious boss monsterthat guarded this dungeon for the script, but now she’s like a nice old grandma. She offers to help you if you help her babysit the grandkids. So it’s an interesting way to look at it. You can tell you are in an RPG world, but it feels more like a play set, but they are actual characters that have been putting on this RPG script.
Q: Let’s move on to the battle system. It’s kind of a classic RPG-like system but has a few twists, can you talk about them?
A: I wanted to focus on making this a really good, solid turn-based RPG. I love turn-based RPGs, it’s always been one of my favorite genres. And I think it’s seeing a resurgence. There was a time when people were like “yuck, turn-based RPG.” Even big companies like Square Enix publicly said that. They said recently about, I think,Final Fantasy 16, that they want to appeal to younger people. And that’s whythey didn’t want to makeFinal Fantasy 16turn-based RPGs, because of that. That kind of hurt me and a lot of turn-based RPG fans, especially because you have other big game companies like Sega withPersona, which is a big resurgence to turn-based RPGs.
So yeah, it’s asolid turn-based RPG at its core. One of the cool, unique mechanics added to it is the crit system. In a traditional RPG, when you get a crit it means that the attack that you just did just gets a bigger number to it. HowVideo Game Fablesworks is that as you do basic attacks, you have a pretty high chance of getting a crit, like 40%. A crit is a resource you store. You can spend that to enhance skills. You can only use an attack skill when you have a crit, so it’s like a mini-limit break. It gives you that little dopamine hit of getting a critical hit very frequently. It also helps the player to pay attention more. And makes you feel like you are a lot more engaged in the battle than in a turn-based RPG because you are paying attention to which skills you can use crits. Like you might have a haste skill, and you can use the crit on the skill to cast it on the whole party instead of one character.
Another major twist is the timer system. At first glance, it seems that you would lose a turn if you miss the time. It’s not actually a punishment, it’s a reward for thinking fast, planning ahead, and knowing what you will do on your turn. How it works is that the timer starts counting down at the beginning of your turn, and then the faster you choose the action, the more it is enhanced. The actual nitty-gritty numbers are, I think, for an attack skill you get a 1.2x damage multiplier if you get it in the green. If you let the timer run all the way down, it’s not going to end your turn, you’ll just get normal damage.
Q: There’s an interesting topic you address in your video series. You say that poison damage is traditionally very poor in RPG games, and you wanted to change that. Can you elaborate?
A: I’ve always struggled with status effects as abigFinal Fantasyfan, especially early on. Why would you ever cast poison when A) it has a 5% chance of hitting, and B) it does one point of damage per tick when you could’ve just cast fire and one-shot an enemy? So, I’ve always struggled with that. I know other RPG series do handle it better, but that always bugged me. As you brought up poison, I made sure that I did the formula right. When you cast poison on an enemy and it reaches the full duration of that effect, it will do more damage than a basic attack would have. You need to plan ahead, could I kill the enemy with an attack spell or will I be able to ride out the entire duration of the status effect?
Buffs and debuffs arealso very effective. I think an attack buff gives a 25% boost to the physical damage. It is very noticeable and especially if you stack buffing yourself and debuffing the enemy, you are really going to feel the effect of that. There’s a lot of min-maxing that you can do. I like to say that the game has a low-skill floor but a pretty high-skill ceiling, where you can really mix-max your character if you want to.
RELATED:Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line Revealed, Getting DLC Based on Other Square Enix Franchises
Q: The game has an open world and random encounters, did that bring any challenges?
A: It’s not technically anopen-world game, because you do have a linear progression. You basically have to go from point A to point B to point C. But you are free to explore the whole world map if you want. If you really want to go out and challenge yourself and fight some higher-level enemies. I want players to have that option. I was inspired a lot by theDragon WarriororDragon Quest 1’sworld map. That was the first RPG I played, and it was really cool how you could go anywhere in that world, even though you had objectives. You could go and get completely destroyed if you wanted to. Once you cross the bridge in that game, you were instantly dead. So you may go anywhere you want, you can’t just go through the dungeons or anything like that, you do have a linear progression.
Q: One interesting feature is teleportation. It seems to work similarly toDiablo’s town portals, for example. Was that planned or was it a coincidence?
A: I haven’t really playedDiablo, so it didn’t really have an influence. But I did plan on having this teleport from the beginning. The game is achallenging turn-based RPG, you have to pay attention or you will die, especially on bosses. But I also wanted to make this game accessible. It’s a good game design to make it easier for people who are learning it or figuring it out, especially with a difficult game. So you’re able to retry a battle for no cost. On a boss battle, or even a regular battle, you can just hit re-try without a cost or penalty, and start the battle. You can even go into your menu and change the party strategy. This allows me to make the game more challenging than some RPGs because they are scared of losing players. Some of the bosses, especially, have a little bit of aDark Soulsfeel where I kind of expect people to die a couple of times.
Q: Let’s move on to character building. How do leveling and skills work?
A: I wanted to do something different with that, as well. With my love for RPGs, I wanted to fix some things I didn’t like on a lot of RPGs, and just change things up to do something new. For the leveling system, I had the idea of the XP system, whereXP is an allocatable resourceas opposed to something you get and level up. XP is a pool of points that you have, and you can use that to level up your party. You also level up the party as one unit, not each character individually. It also costs XP to equip weapons, shields, and accessories, as does equipping skills.
The cool thing is that it’s not something you spend, it’s a re-allocatable resource, and you can always get it back. For example, if you don’t have enough XP to equip a new skill you got. You could go and fight some enemies and get the XP, but you can also bump down your party level by one and get some XP back. There are also thresholds, you might need to be a certain level to use a new weapon you got. There’s a lot to play around with your resources, and like I said you could just go andgrind more XP. However, the system gives a little bit more flexibility on how to use your XP.
Q: So you talked a little about loot and equipment, but there’s also some crafting in the game, can you talk about that?
A: There’s a little bit of crafting, but it’s not anything as deep as you might have seen on some other games, where you are crafting a lot of custom stuff. Crafting in this game is essentially upgrading your party. Thenumber one thing in crafting is making weapons. How I balanced it is that levels don’t give a huge boost in stats. I did this for a specific reason, I did it so that people wouldn’t feel a need to grind, but they are welcome to if they want to. Basically, I didn’t want to waste people’s time with this game. So if you are dying at a boss, you probably need to redo your strategy and grinding isn’t going to be the solution.
Then the problem arises, what is the point in XP at all? That’s why equipping a new tier of weapons, you have to be a certain level, and the weapons give a really big boost in stats, as do the shields. I did a lot of testing and a bunch of spreadsheets. I am a big nerd, so I have calculations, I have formulas, I have simulations going. So if you are fighting most enemies you come across, you are going to be at a proper level to equip next-tier weapons. It’s not going to require a big grind. So what you do with crafting, you gather ore or minerals, there’s stuff like topaz and emeralds, and that’s how you craft new weapons. Those new tier weapons are gated off for story progression, so you can’t just go out to the scary area, grab some rubies and makethe best weapons in the game.
However, not everyone likes mining, gardening, or fishing in a game. So what I did was that I made several different ways to get these minerals, because the weapons are pretty essential. you’re able to mine them from random ore points on the world map in a mini-game. Or you can get ore through fishing. You give fish to a seal in town inside the well that trades fish for points. With those points, you can buy ore and some other items. Also, there’s gardening, it’s a more passive thing where you plant a topaz seed, and after a certain amount of in-game time, topaz will pop up and you can harvest it. I like to have that flexibility, since getting new weapons is essential, but I don’t want to lock people into one certain way of doing that. If people like all of them, they can do all three and get a lot of ore.
RELATED:Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion Release Date Confirmed
Q: You referenced this a little bit earlier already, but let’s go back to the visuals of the game. There are both 2D and 3D visuals in the game, what’s the thinking behind that?
A: Yeah, the main inspiration for the game going in was, what would the game world look like from their perspective. I like to think that this was like an NES RPG. You can kind of see that in the simple 16 by 16 pixel art of the characters. So I wanted to ask, what does an NES RPG look like from their perspective? I don’t think it would look like we see it. We’re seeing this overhead view through a simplified TV.
So, it has a few different types of characters. There are flat 2D sprites, and those are mostly relegated to enemies. There are the semi-flat sprites, which are the main character and most characters in town. A little likePaper Mariowith a little bit of depthto them. You can see that when Aru turns sideways in the prison, you can see her from the side. And then there are the full 3D characters, and those are mostly relegated to some enemies, some major characters. You have all these different art styles living together in this world, and they see each other just as other denizens of the world. It’s not like they see each other differently.
Q: One thing you decided to make for the game is diegetic menus, what made you choose that over, say, flat menus?
A: I think it was that I love diegetic menus. There’s not much to say besides that. I think my first experience with that was withDead Space. I played that when I was a kid and didn’t play very far because I’m a wuss, and can’t play scary games. But I did play it and I enjoyed the menus in that game because they existed in the world. I thought it was really cool and hadn’t really seen that before. I’m sure it has been done before that, but I just wasn’t aware of it. I saw the diegetic menus and how the character could actually see the menu; it’s an actual, existing thing in the world. I thought that was so cool, it blew my mind.
I’ve always latched onto that. I told myself, that whenever I make my first 3D game, I’m definitely going to do diegetic menus. That’s basically why I did it, it’s really, really cool. It gives a little character to the world. It actually worked out well for this game, because it kind of fit in with the theme. Since they were putting on an RPG for the player, it makes sense that the menus that players would see were actual 3D blocks in their world. I worked out really well that this was the first game I got to use diegetic menus.
Q: The music is the only thing that you didn’t make yourself. However, can you tell us a little bit about the music, too?
A: Yeah, it’s done by Levc_EGM. His name is Luis, and he’s awesome. I had put feelers on Twitter a while back. I was looking for someone to do music. I have some history in music, but I’ve never written music before. I’ve played piano, but I didn’t want to add years to development time just for me to start writing music as well. I’m going to put aside my pride, and let someone else do music. Even if I wanted to be a hardcore solo developer, I’m just going to let someone else do the music. I had a bunch of really great people send me their portfolios. He ended up being among the top three I picked. Everyone was great, but a lot of them didn’t fit the theme.
People sent me really good portfolios with cinematic orchestral soundtracks, but I wanted somethingPaper Mario-ish with maybe chiptune in it. Levc_EGM just fit the best, and he really understood what I was saying. He’s really amazing. I would just show him a screenshot for a theme for a dungeon, or tell him about it, and maybe give a reference song from something with a similar vibe. Within a week, he would send an almost finished sample, and it was a masterpiece. I really enjoyed working with him and I will keep working with him in the future. Important thing is that I give him all the profits from the soundtrack sales on Steam. There are bundles also where you can get both the game and the soundtrack. If anyone wants to support him, buy the soundtrack.
RELATED:Final Fantasy Origin Wanderer of the Rift DLC Release Date Revealed
Q: That’s all I have for you. Is there anything you’d like to add or give shoutouts to anyone?
A: In terms of shoutouts, definitely The Paperverse. It’s a game dev group where they make games that arePaper Marioadjacent. It could be games that arePaper Marioclones, or with a similar vibe. They are pretty loose with their interpretation. They let me in their group and they let me be in their Paperverse Direct in April this year. I was honored to be there, and it was super cool. They’ve been a great help to me, they are my core game dev support group. We all go there and cry about our troubles and stress about our code not working. I really appreciate them.
As far as other stuff, the game is out on Steam right now. Go check it out. There’s a free demo that lets you play from the beginning of the game all the way up to the first dungeon. It’s a pretty generous demo, with at least an hour of gameplay. You can even carry over your save data. It’s no risk, go try it, and support a small indie developer. Worst case, you try the demo and don’t like it.
You can follow me on Twitter, I’m pretty active there. That’s @MomijiStudios. Otherwise, I’m just a small solo developer, and marketing is hard. It’s a hard industry to be in, where there are tons of games released every week. So if you like the game, any word of mouth is so helpful. I think people don’t always understand that for a small developer like me, just telling a friend about the game, or talking on social media, even to 20 followers. That’s cool, I love that. Telling influencers, content creators, and gaming outlets like you guys is so helpful to me.
[END]
Video Game Fablesis available now on PC.
MORE:The 15 Best Western RPGs That Ape Final Fantasy’s Turn-Based Combat
