Developer Thierry Boulanger still lights up when you ask him about his favorite game from his childhood. This game is why I chose this career," says Boulanger, the creative director of the indie Sea of Stars.
The music hit me so hard, and it connected me with the notion that there was a guiding hand behind any game you play. From that point on, I started daydreaming about games I would want to make. Decades later, after the industry chased higher fidelity graphics and approached the look of big-budget movies and TV , Boulanger and other international studios are spinning up new titles inspired by the golden era of 90s Japanese role-playing games β and audiences are responding to them.
Sea of Stars sold over , copies during its first release day, despite being included for free in Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass and Sony's PlayStation Plus subscription services at launch. A spiritual successor to the epic Suikoden series, Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes, became the most-funded video game Kickstarter of and is now set to release April All while many, many more smaller pixel RPGs continue to flood the market. As games moved away from 2D-pixel graphics to increasingly realistic 3D environments, they also abandoned many tried-and-true mechanics.
Rather than have realistic characters just stand around waiting for their turn to fight, Yoshida transformed the latest series title into a pure action experience, disappointing some Final Fantasy fans. While some new games like Baldur's Gate 3 buck the trend that's moved realistic graphics away from turn-based combat, old-school designs typically come paired with old-school aesthetics. But developers have still found room to innovate. SacriFire's environment is 3D, but all of the textures are hand painted pixel art.
But that doesn't mean uncritically recycling old ideas. Boulanger wanted to capture the story beats that made games memorable without replicating what could make them frustrating. During Chained Echoes' development, he emphasized how players felt when playing those older games, not how they actually played out. He also didn't use a traditional leveling system, since that would prompt players to repeatedly beat enemies that gave them the most experience points.
