The Indie Game Magazine August 2014 | Issue 40 | Page 15

with the advanced audiovisual capabilities of today’s
modern hardware. Our goal is to create something
nostalgic and familiar, but also sleek and modern. The
2D RPG, and even the JRPG genre as a whole, has been
dying during the last decade, and we are trying to
completely rebrand and reinvent it here.
Graphically, Elysian Shadows takes old schoolstyle pixel art and mixes it with advanced modern
dynamic lighting and shading capabilities. Our engine
boasts per-pixel dynamic point, spot, and directional
lights along with pixel perfect shadows. The geometry
itself is also being rendered entirely in 3D space with
bump mapping and specular highlights, allowing us to
dynamically change viewpoints between the classic,
overhead 2D perspective, and a completely 3D view, in
a manner that no other 2D RPG has ever attempted.
Technically we are a 3D game with a 2D skin.
Our audio engine is similarly ambitious, and features
the same marriage of old and new. The background
music itself will dynamically change to match the action
and tension-level of the environments, adding and
removing instruments seamlessly to match battles and
boss fights. The engine is also fully positional, offering
surround-sound in 3D space, not just 2D. The player
standing way above a growling enemy on a bridge will
hear the enemy below them.
The soundtrack itself borrows chiptune sounds
and samples from the old school Super Nintendo
and Genesis games that everyone knows and loves,

and fuses them with modern instruments, choirs,
electronics, and production techniques, creating a
sound that is both new and old. For example, one of
our boss themes fuses guitars, synthesizers, and the
Sega Genesis’s trademarked sound driving the melody,
complete with an intense drum track sampled from
Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
The gameplay also offers similar innovations to the
entire genre that should be immediately apparent to
players. [Protagonist] Julien runs and jumps in full 3D
space, offering action and platforming mechanics to
the genre, and additional exploration depth. Battles
are initiated in-place, and are highly action-oriented.
Our physics engine plays intimately into combat, as
players can pick up and throw objects at enemies—
you can even drop a potion from your inventory and
smash it over a boss’s face in a last, desperate attempt
to deal damage. Many spells directly interact with the
environment, as it is more than just a static back-drop
in ES—it’s an interactive aspect of the game providing
another level of strategy to battles.

IGM: Tell me a bit about the world Elysian Shadows

takes place in. What sort of conflict triggers the events
that set the story in motion?

TES: With Asphodel, we set out to create a lush

and diverse world. We wanted something colorful and
exciting to explore, offering a variety of biomes such
as forests, beaches, tundra, volcanoes, plains, etc. The

15
The Indie Game Magazine | www.indiegamemag.com