People who are missing will have notices on a bulletin board in town. At this point in the story, I’m told, villagers have been traveling to the dungeon to collect resources they so desperately need, but lately people haven’t been returning. Your goal as the player, then, is to awaken the Guardians to restore Anuchard to its former glory.įor my demo, we entered just before the game’s second dungeon. The basic premise of the game is that the island of Anuchard has been fragmented, and its mighty Guardians lie dormant. Additionally, Hyperlight Drifter, Bastion, Hades, and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening were all cited as inspirations ( Hyperlight Drifter for its use of varied enemy behavior to create interesting challenges for players, Bastion for its dungeon gimmicks, Hades for its controller options, and Link’s Awakening for the way it uses visual cues to help players solve puzzles). It all blends together pretty well, giving the game a very charming simplified aesthetic. Visually, Anuchard draws influence from Legend of Mana, using a hand-painted art style for backgrounds, pixel-art sprite characters, and modern particle effects. Benjamin from Freedom Games (the game’s publisher) played through a section of Anuchard while sharing his screen, as Rico talked me through what I was seeing. However, I was still able to see about 20 minutes of gameplay. When I saw that StellarNull, the game’s development studio, had an open E3 appointment, I jumped at the chance to chat about the game.īecause E3 was all digital, we had our meeting via Discord, and lead developer Rico Lemba was calling in from Indonesia. I was introduced to JRPGs in the PSOne era, so I have a ton of affection for the amazing lineup of games in the PlayStation library.

Anuchard is an upcoming RPG that’s inspired by the PSOne era of JRPGs.

Download the new version Anuchard