Arcadian Atlas

Inviting players instantly into a beautiful experience, Arcadian Atlas shows itself off as a story-focused tactical RPG. The focus on the story is easy to see with beautiful character designs and strong character motivations creating a unified introduction. Highlighting the opposite focus of the game reveals the striking combat system that takes from its predecessors but adds subtle changes to completely engage the player. A passion project is not just an impression but a genuine fact, sharing with Ryan Tagawa at PAX West (Arcadian Atlas‘s Producer @SerenityForge) revealed some incredible information about the game.

Interviewing Ryan Tagawa

At PAX West 2022 Serenity Forge is in booth 757 and having a chance to meet Ryan Tagawa was an amazing pleasure. The producer was happy to share the work of Otter Studio, a small dev team of only a brother and sister combo. Ryan shared some small clues to the story that when combined with the demo and trailers, bring a focused image to this game, and I am all for it. “Different Views” is the definitive answer when I asked about the story, but I wanted to know why this game focuses on narrative conflicts, especially when talking about the character’s strong backgrounds. Ryan shared that the developers of the game wanted to focus on the game’s world and how it “has this interesting political narrative, different people are going to have different views.” Amazingly sharing as well, Ryan goes into detail about the character’s challenges, through combat and story the morals/beliefs of the characters will be shredded. I found this to be an especially interesting grab because as an avid lover of conflicting stories, the darkest moments of a character can often be its most memorable.

Gameplay!

Having had a chance to sit down after my interview with Ryan, I got to play the demo for Arcadian Atlas. There were two available combats but I only had time to beat one, non-the-less I was impressed off the bat. Options are the key in Arcadian Atlas and with so many skills and classes to choose from the ways you can engage in combat are quite breathtaking. Containing about 15 different characters to choose from, some having the same class, knocked me off my guard. The game boasts 12 custom classes making the choices for my party a little difficult(since I wanted to use them all!).

I also noticed the combat bar at the bottom displaying the character’s turns and if they were in a casting turn(when they would be squatted instead of standing). Some skills have a casting time when targeting, and your character will have to wait until their casting turn to unleash their devastating effects. The targeting system works hand in hand with this idea since you can choose to target a location instead of an enemy character. Allowing for the player to pull off complex traps that will make for solid combos. A mechanic that caught me off guard when playing through the demo was your AOE skills will target both friendlies and enemies alike. This can make for tough decisions because when a friend is surrounded by enemies, healing your unit will also heal the enemies. This places an emphasis on your unit placement since you can separate the action of your character from their movement.

Conclusive Thoughts

My final thoughts of the game are impressed, two people making this game over several years is already a wonderful story. The game combines so many elements and integrates them so cleanly that there is no way an avid fan of this classic genre will want to miss out. The developers, Otter Studios, have a Steam page for the title you can access here. Make sure to give them a wishlist or a follow to show support, since the release will be happening in summer 2023.