Soul Saga Episode 1 announced, but probably dead

Soul Saga
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Disastercake Games has announced* Soul Saga Episode 1, a 3D jRPG being created in Unity.

* (Kinda. I actually found out about this game back in November, but kept waiting for a better time to write about it. It seems there isn’t going to be a better one, though, so here we go!)

The actual website is quite barren of details about the game beyond numerous screenshots showing how nice it looks, but luckily there’s an interview floating around the internet with some more details about it:

It’s basically inspired by the “Tales of” series, a long running series of role-playing games published by Namco. I grew up with the “Tales of” series, so I really wanted to capture its essence. It’s a very immersive experience powered by a procedurally built storyline.

The game is planned to feature combat styled after Final Fantasy 10, extensive character customization, and a cell phone inspired by the game Catherine that will provide access to “inventory, equipment, skills, [and] messages from and to other characters.”

A fair bit of the game’s art is complete, as is the game’s theme song. However, the game page lists it as due for release in March 2013, which is awfully soon given its current state of completion.

Worryingly, the Soul Saga blog hasn’t been updated since early November, nor have there been any new tweets from the DisasterCake Twitter account. Similarly, a video of gameplay promised for release in December has not materialized.

This is the creator’s first game, so it’s possible that he simply bit off more of the titular “disaster cake” than he could chew. (Incidentally, this is why I counsel people to avoid making an RPG until they have more game development experience.)

Hopefully this isn’t the end for Soul Saga; for now, though, I’m going to file this one in the game obituaries. A shame: it’s such a pretty corpse.

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5 Comments »

 
  • Matt says:

    He mentions the Tales series… but the game’s combat is modeled after FFX? Weird.

    That said, any game that says it is directly inspired by FFX’s combat system would have had my vote. Here is to hoping that RL got in the way and this project isn’t dead.

  • Adorna says:

    that looks really pretty and I love the reference games so I really hope this will revive…

  • Pretinaverse says:

    It looks great. In facebook he says:

    “I ended up having more and more issues with trying to get the animations done, and by the middle of December I decided just to teach myself (with the help of a couple friends) how to edit 3D models, create the skeleton (the rig) used for animations, and also how to do animations. I was extremely successful with the model editing and rigging, but I found that I don’t have a knack for animations, so I’ll still be outsourcing that part (I have an animator working right now). However, because I was able to fix everything wrong with the models that were preventing animating, the project is able to continue now!

    So what I’m doing now is trying to wait for the new animations to start coming in before I start posting some screenshots and news again.

    After playing around with the game and it’s code over the past few months, I am thinking of changing up the overall game design of Soul Saga now too. That will be outlined in the update as well.

    Thanks for being interested and keeping in touch!”

  • […] a news article written in January at IndieRPGs.net (http://indierpgs.com/2013/01/soul-saga-episode-1-announced/) stating that Soul Saga looks great but is probably […]

  • […] Saga — you may recall this as the 3D jRPG I covered under the suspicion that development had stopped, only to recant when I learned that it had merely […]

 

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