Earthlock: can a JRPG from the West tick all the right boxes?

Earthlock: Festival of Magic is the new Kickstarter-funded JRPG from Norweigan developer Snowcastle Games. Dave Cook talks with the team to see if this colourful, intriguing new project can satisfy the appetite of seasoned genre fans.

"Long story short, we love RPGs of all kinds," Snowcastle Games' Fredrik Tyskerud tells me, "and a large portion of our team have very fond memories of playing JRPGs both in the past and now. We all have stories of jaws left on the floor the first time we saw a summon in FFVII or how the story and characters affected us."

The Norwegian developers behind Earthlock: Festival of Magic are part of a generation that was utterly mesmerised by PSone JRPGS, and witnessed the rise of darker western experiences like Ultima. Like many of us, Tyskerud holds memories of turn-based battle systems, reams of text-based dialogue and breathtaking world maps close to his heart.

These are just some hallmarks of classic JRPG games that have given away to corridor experiences like Final Fantasy 13, and more action-orientated combat systems seen recently in the wonderful Tales of Xillia. These games are fine but deviate away from those old values somwhat, and that's perhaps why Snowcastle's project has proved so endearing. It's a Western attempt at cracking this most Eastern-dominated of genres, and from the looks of things, Tyskerud and his team are right on track.

The Earthlock: Festival of Magic Kickstarter campaign launched in March, and with it, brought a number of unique, nostalgia-heavy concepts to the table. It's the first episode of a trilogy that takes place on the planet Umbra which, for reasons unknown, has stopped spinning, entering one half of the world into a deep freeze, while transforming the other into a searing desert. Only an area in the middle provides safety and some sense of order.

”While the team is being careful to avoid falling into familiar traps and patterns, it’s still keen to deliver high adventure in the vein of Square’s PSone Final Fantasy trilogy, but with an interesting and fundamental gameplay twist.”

"We did a lot of research into what we wanted as a basis for our world and story," Tyskerud recalls. "Somewhere along the way while talking about cataclysmic events we came up with the idea of a world that has stopped spinning. We felt it was a very cool premise to build on and went with it.

"The players join the story long after the planet stopped spinning, so it’s not a post apocalyptic world in the usual sense. The world has been rebuilt through a couple millennia after the Deadly Halt as it’s called in our lore. The world is still very much affected by the events that happened long ago. Humans do not look to invention to advance their lives; the archaeologists and scavengers are the ones who find old technology and re-purpose it."

Whatever habitable land remains is governed by the mighty Suvian Empire, and it's against a backdrop of looming war and the threat of a shadowy magical cult that desert bandit Amon enters the scene. Together with former Suvian pilot Ive and friends, players will explore vast oceans, grassy plains and perilous wastelands to uncover the truth about Umbra's cataclysmic past, and topple the regime once and for all.

"Without spoiling the story," Tyskerud continues, "Amon and Ive and the whole band come together not from old friendship, but rather fate and events that pull them together. The magical cult is planning something big, tied to the world before the Deadly Halt. They are hell-bent on making that happen and have worked in the shadows for a long time.

"Amon is pretty happy with his life as a desert scavenger when we join him. Ive, Taika and Gnart make an unpleasant, but intriguing, entrance into Amon's life and the little band is soon pulled into an escalating, worldwide conflict. They will of course meet Bryn, Fey and others on their way that may or may not join them on their adventure."

Tyskerud told me that Snowcastle looks to turn some JRPG conventions on their head, including stereotypical characteristics such as the young, giggly girl, the hulking, silent brute, and the guy who's always hungry. While the team is being careful to avoid falling into familiar traps and patterns, it's still keen to deliver high adventure in the vein of Square's PSone Final Fantasy trilogy, but with an interesting and fundamental gameplay twist.

While combat (seen above) is turn-based - a must for any team trying to re-capture the JRPG golden days - Snowcastle has created a neat crafting mechanic that sees the player planting seeds to grow magical ammo for Amon's Spud Cannon. In the Unity alpha demo I played, one of the first quests is to gather materials necessary to plant seeds on Plumpet Island, a lush safe haven that serves as the player's home base.

With water and magic seeds to hand, I approached Amon's crop garden and planted a variety of fire, water, ice, lightning and goliath seeds, which then proceed to grow over time. They can then be harvested to add elemental effects to Amon and Ive's attacks. You'll need them too, as the fire-based creatures that dwell in the deserts can be easily defeated if you apply the right element to your blows.

Here's a quick look at the process:

It starts off as a simple matter of pulling weeds, tilling soil then planting your seed wherever you want within the garden.

”The genre is a great template for complex storytelling and we want to go back to basics and try to focus on that quality, but still make Earthlock look and feel like a ‘next-gen’ game.”

Add water and presto! You've got yourself a patch of organic ammunition that continues to reproduce fruit over time. You can hang around and harvest repeatedly before you head off on your next quest, or simply busy yourself for a while then return to reap the spoils. It's a neat mechanic that should be quite deep and expansive in the final build. Concept art of the Kitten Shot - which is basically a lovable cat seed that leaps at foes and makes them overcome with 'SQUEEE' - gives a taster of what could be.

"The growing of ammo was actually one of the initial concepts we had," Tyskerud explains. We thought it would be cool to have world where magical energy came from the earth and would manifest itself in different ways through plants. We also realized that the system could have infinite depth when considering the possibilities of botany. Basically you will find different kind of seeds in various regions of the world. These can be found as plants or be dropped from certain monsters.

"Then you can go back to the island base and plant the seeds. The growing time will depend on the type, but the speed can be greatly increased with materials received from dead monsters. Plants are at this point divided into three types. Herbs can be used as enhancers and recovery, spuds can be used as spells/ammo and the last one is a secret. Later on in the game you will also be able to craft new species which are deviations or mutations of specific plants, though we are still considering how this will be done in the game."

Once you have a healthy stockpile of ammo, Amon and his chums will depart Plumpet by boat and explore the world, battling monsters and completing quests as they go. Fights are started by coming into contact with enemies in the field, and play out in a turn-based fashion. The format will be familiar to genre veterans, but Snowcastle has added in a neat pairing system that adds further strategy to fights. it's all about linking two characters to gain extra buffs and progression.

"The pairing ability is of course a big one, strategy wise," Tyskerud says. "The pairing will affect the team’s combined stats in a very real way as well as gaining access to unique pair abilities. We are also toying with the idea of having a 'bond' between pairs that grows as they are exposed to combat together. This would give the players the choice between going for a new pair, and gain access to new attacks and abilities, or keep developing something they have already invested time into.

”While we try not to use that term [JRPG] to categorize the game, we are of course inspired by the earlier Squaresoft RPGs. Our main goal when we started Snowcastle Games was to tell stories with unique worlds and interesting characters, so I would say that to us the story part is the most important.”

"We’re also prototyping a stacking system for elemental effects, so for example Ive shoots a water pearl at an enemy, which is dealt damage and a chance to give the status effect 'soaked.' Amon can then follow up with an ice spud and deal increased damage (combined water and frost) as well as the status effect 'freeze' on the enemy causing it to not move for a period of time."

"Protectors who use magic in a raw form, not through spuds, will be able to buff the party, cast protective spells, debuff enemies and of course use combination attacks and spells with the warriors. The harvesting is also directly tied to the combat in that you grow the ammunition and it will be imperative to have a good stock of effective ammo against, say, a particular boss."

Already you can see just how deep this system could become, but as Earthlock's October launch is a while away yet, some elements of combat are still being solidified as you read this. Either way it's got this RPG fan intrigued, and I'm keen to see just how the western team's final project fares at release. I close our chat by asking Tyskerud for his thoughts on what he feels makes Earthlock a quality JRPG title.

"While we try not to use that term [JRPG] to categorize the game, we are of course inspired by the earlier Squaresoft RPGs," he concludes. "Our main goal when we started Snowcastle Games was to tell stories with unique worlds and interesting characters, so I would say that to us the story part is the most important.

"The genre is a great template for complex storytelling and we want to go back to basics and try to focus on that quality, but still make Earthlock look and feel like a 'next-gen' game. So while we are working with familiar conventions, we do want Earthlock to feel like a Snowcastle game (or shall I say NRPG) so when we designed the game we constantly tried to find new ways of doing the elements you would expect from a game like this - which requires a lot of prototyping."

We'll keep you updated on Earthlock: Festival of Magic's progress as it happens. For now, check out the Kickstarter and see what you think.