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TGS 2018: Hands-On with ‘RPG Time’, a Visually Impressive RPG Adventure

Games don’t need a “wow" moment to be good, but it never hurts to have one. RPG Time, an upcoming adventure game from Japanese independent developer Deskworks, hit me with a few of said moments within a couple of minutes of starting the game. The premise sees you playing as an elementary school kid whose friend has designed an RPG in his notebook. He wants you to try out his creation, however rough it may be. This was easily one of the more impressive and interesting mobile games on display at the Tokyo Game Show, even if it is far from being finished.

You dive into this world of pencil sketches and paper craft as your friend narrates the story. The sketches come to life, albeit sometimes with very limited animation, and all character dialogue is provided by your friend, who swaps out headbands with pictures of the characters attached to them. Right from the title screen, you can’t help but be impressed at the sheer detail and believable nature of this supposed child’s creation. The quest moves with the turning of the pages, and you never quite know what each new page will bring.

Interestingly, the game doesn’t seem to operate like a traditional RPG, or at least the demo that was available at the Tokyo Game Show didn’t. It plays more like a puzzle-platformer or an adventure game, with obstacles that you’ll need to get past through the clever use of items and the environment around you. Your friend will occasionally jump in with his pencil and erase or draw in elements, forcing you to take new paths or re-think certain puzzles. When you meet an enemy, you’ll go to a separate screen that looks a lot like a standard JRPG battle mode, but beating the enemies is more about finding tricks in the background to weaken them rather than relying on a statistical or tactical advantage.

Unfortunately, the developer wasn’t too keen on letting me record a video of the game, which is a shame as you really do need to see it in motion to truly get what it’s doing. RPG Time still has quite a bit of time left in its development, but the team is shooting to release the game somewhere around the summer of 2019. The existing demo is incredibly polished and even has a high-quality English translation, but it’s also pretty short once you figure out what to do. If the developer can maintain this level of quality for the rest of the game, though, we could be looking at something very special indeed here.