The Indie Game Magazine August 2014 | Issue 40 | Page 16

overworld was highly influenced by games like Zelda,
Secret of Mana, and Final Fantasy VI. We wanted to
create a strange overworld whose natural beauty was
seemingly at odds with the mounting conflict… and to
compliment this overworld is a wide variety of exotic,
mysterious, dark, and downright creepy underground
ruins scattered throughout the land, whose influences
draw from Zelda temples, and even the survival horror
genre. While these ruins play a pretty important role
in the day-to-day lives of the population, with many
people making a living plundering and studying them,
their exact purpose and origins remain largely a mystery.
This dichotomy between the lush overworld and dark
underworld is something we wanted to emphasize,
and it’s even reiterated in the name “Elysian Shadows,”
implying a darkness lying beneath a paradise.
The world of Asphodel has long been divided
between people who use “magic” and people who
rely on advances of modern science and technology
throughout their day-to-day lives. “Magic” is associated
with the religious, being a gift bestowed upon loyal
followers of The Creator, while science and technology
is reserved for scholars, explorers, and heretics, who
have turned away from the gift of The Creator. These
two sects have lived largely at an uneasy peace with one
another, until the main character, Julien, and his party
make an astonishing discovery while excavating one
of the local ruins. This monumental discovery is large
enough to tip the balance of this rising conflict, and
even bring to light several major questions involving the
nature of “magic” itself, and the history of the ancient
ruins scattered about the lands.

In an abrupt turn of events, the party quickly finds
themselves thrown head-first into the waging battle
between magic and technology, and on a quest to
prevent their own civilization from suffering the same
fate as the ancient ruins they have been exploring.

IGM: The idea of Magic vs. Technology is really
intriguing to me. Where does