When the spring wind whips my face, my eyes are closed, and I'm a lost maiden somewhere along the green cliffs of Ireland. My white veil makes a collapsed soufflé in the dust, I am completely alone, but I still stretch out my chapped fingers for the angels to place their guiding light in my hands – until a rock whacks me in the eyelid.
I was totally wrong. I'm not an Irish maiden – I'm getting pelted with construction debris in Brooklyn, and all that's sitting in my hands is a demo copy of Analgesic Productions' upcoming fantasy game Angeline Era on my Steam Deck. Whoops!
But playing the dreamy "bump-slash" game Angeline Era, with all its creamsicle colors and monster sprites, will make you extra sensitive to your runaway imagination. After speaking to developers Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka over email, I've gathered that that's the point of it: this forest adventure is for Bambi-eyed players who've seen enough of triple A and double A games and want something else to crumble in their hands.
"Somehow, Angeline Era is the first 3D game ever to incorporate bump-slash combat," Han-Tani tells me of the combat, a type of fighting that fuses together walking into enemies and attacking them, popularized by the Ys JRPGs. "We had to figure out a lot ourselves – the feel, enemy sizes, how the hitbox systems should work, best enemy types, what levels work best…"
In my time with the game's demo during Steam Next Fest, its low-poly puddles and bugs seemed to bring with them impressive immediacy – these creatures, like real trees and weevils under the sun, are rough around the edges. This makes them tactile. Bumping your mini-adventurer into their butts to deliver devastating sword slashes feels extra satisfying.
"The biggest influence on the low-poly models are the enemies from the original Final Fantasy 7," Kittaka tells me. "There is a beautifully gestural sensibility in how they imply detail with big, craggy shapes and simple vertex colors. It reminds me of life drawing exercises, which involve quickly simplifying the complex human form into large three dimensional shapes."
The developer pair also relished being inspired by real life, hiking around Ireland to help plan Angeline Era's layout and researching Christian history and apocrypha for the game's lore.
"I'd like people to come away with an appreciation for how the real physical world can be engaging and fun even with the simplest of verbs like 'walking,'" Han-Tani says. "Angeline Era's action is all about taking a minimal set of mechanics and letting the player try them in a variety of situations that feel different, despite being composed of 'Bumpslash, Jump, Gun.'"
"Something I think about in making games is just the enormity of small design choices," Kittaka says. "For example, I'm not an expert in ecology, but by going on hikes across Ireland, I could document what kinds of plants exist in different biomes."
"I do think that the main plot of the game was shaped by our trip," she continues, "but what's most memorable to me is the influence on small details. For example, we get to see what our protagonist Tets thinks of black pudding vs. white pudding!"
Angeline Era will release on PC and Mac some time in 2025.
