Meet the VFX artist who learned to program just to make a game that's Nier as hell

Two years ago, a visual effects artist who goes by Ace online decided to leverage his background in CG and animation to create an ambitious action RPG based on a story that's been kicking around his head for years.

This being his first crack at game development, Ace initially tried assembling a small team to support the project. The only problem is that, despite freelance art work for other game studios, he couldn't find the means to pay multiple people for a project he's been handling in his free time, so instead he slowly learned how to design and program almost everything himself. The result is Aikode, an absolutely bonkers game that's nowhere near finished but could already pass for an entry in Nier director Yoko Taro's dream journal. 

Aikode caught my attention last month when Ace posted an animation reel showcasing attacks and effects for one of the game's many playable characters. There's a Devil May Cry flourish to the sword-turned-scythe wielded by the scarlet-haired girl in the clip, but something about the presentation immediately made me think of Nier. I don't know if it's the blood-red hair, the character's silhouette, or the dramatic field of lilies, but I couldn't get Taro's aesthetic out of my head. The more I learned about Aikode, the deeper that vibe was ingrained. And as it turns out, Ace is indeed a big Nier fan. 

"I'm a fan of Yoko Taro's work in general," he tells me over Discord after I flag him down to learn more about this unforgettably weird game. "I love Drakengard, Nier, Nier Replicant, Automata. I love a lot of things from Nier games, Taro's storytelling and stuff like that. There's a lot of inspirations from a lot of games. People who play a lot of games will notice that."

Ace says he's partly looking to combine the best bits of his favorite games. Aikode wants a grappling hook similar to Sekiro's, a glider reminiscent of Gravity Rush's pseudo-flight, game-ified characterization a la Persona, and meaningful side quests like the ones prepared by CD Projekt Red. Ace is aiming for an open-world that's big enough to get lost in but not so big that it feels empty. It's a giant melting pot of elements – arguably too giant, but Ace insists he's cognizant of over-scoping – driven by a love for games and supported by some striking art and intriguing original ideas. 

some_of_the_progress_ive_made_these_last_two from r/unrealengine

Even the barest plot summary of Aikode is a head-scratcher. Without missing a beat, Ace tells me about an android named Aiko who's trying to regain her memories in a world overseen by a quasi-religious government sect. My brain starts to leak out of my ears around the time we get to the Victorian steampunk realm which somehow intersects with a near-futuristic utopia reclaimed by nature, and we haven't even gotten to the painstaking recreation of Shibuya, Japan yet. 

Aikode is a layered story of deception that might not make sense until the end, Ace says, and it's so big that he's brought on a second writer to help with things like dialogue and script corrections (Spanish is his first language, though that's hard to tell from his excellent English). "You have all of these things, different places, different characters, everything seems so disconnected," Ace says. "But in the end, everything is connected, and at the same time it's connected to our reality." Hell, even he admits that "it's kind of crazy to explain all of this," but I guess that can happen when you stew on a story alone for years. 

Apart from an extra writer, voice actors, as well as a composer who's apparently already 200 tracks deep, Aikode is basically all Ace's work. He's even got a home-made motion capture suite, complete with a legit suit and camera, that lets him physically act out movements for every character to use as a base for hand animating.

Even with added help, Ace reckons Aikode still needs at least two more years of work, though he's hoping that support from the likes of the Epic Megagrant, an Epic Games fund for standout Unreal Engine projects, will speed things up. If all goes well, he'll have a presentable demo sooner rather than later, but the concept of soon is indeed subjective. I was in this for the gorgeous art and flashy combat from the outset, but I hope Aikode can deliver everything Ace is after, because it sounds pretty damn cool. 

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