Indie Spotlight: Worldless

By: MithrandielA couple weeks ago I came across a striking gameplay video on Twitter. It featured an other-worldly protagonist with minimalist design and stunning combat. Take a peek for yourself:https://twitter.com/worldless_game/status/1003705830057930752Titled "Worldless", I was immediately curious about what this game was all about. I reached out to the creator, Mr. Joel Roset, who agreed to answer some questions for me via email. Take a look below! (Note: English is not Mr. Roset's first language. Some of his responses have been edited for the sake of comprehension with his permission.)

Tell us a little bit about Worldless - where did the idea for this game come from?

I started thinking about Worldless around 2009, before I knew I wanted to work on video games. I had just completed an RPG Maker full game (25+ hours long with custom graphics and edits) named Secret of Gaya.

I did a few tests trying full 2D animations:

This soon evolved into trying to rotoscope 3D animations:

However,this style is so slow to do and very taxing. I gave up on the project for a while. I didn't think that I would end up achieving anything, I just wanted to try animating as well as imagining a new game and combat system. This was something new for me as I had never animated before, so it was fun for a while.

A few years later, I was working as an Animator in video games, and basically out of luck and weird inspiration, I came up with a way to try to redo the project with a visual style that was easy and fast to animate. The difficult and time consuming animation process was why I had stopped before, so having a more efficient means of animating meant I could re-visit this world and project.

The design is very unique. What were some of your inspirations when it came to the visuals of your game?

I actually got the inspiration after watching 3 movies in a row: Inception, I can't even remember the second film, and The Fountain (this one in particular), I came up with the idea of doing a kind of constellation-style character. Very simple. No faces. Nothing that could drag animation quality.

Some other things factor in as well: Odin Sphere, with it's stunning 2D art. Being a fan of the Playstation era of Final Fantasy games, those elements spoke to me as well. Finally, Devil May Cry is a big inspiration as well, as I love cool action games.

Besides the aesthetic, what are some ways that you are hoping to make combat in Worldless fun and engaging?

So, the main goal originally was to have a unique combat system. It's turn based, but not as you might expect.

You have an offense turn with limited Time, but with freedom of doing any offensive actions.

Once your time is up, you enter a defensive stance. Here the enemy does it's action and you can perform a variety of defensive moves. Lot's of risk reward scenarios during your defense that then factor in your options for your next attacking turn.

The concept is that you have to be very on point during both your offense and your defense. Optimization is key, and good timing will make you unstoppable.

In order not to make every turn simple/predictable, enemies may have counters that you have to pay attention to. They might have weaknesses to certain moves before being vulnerable, different forms, etc.

Finally, there's a key mechanic that tracks your performance. By not repeating actions, having good timing and not getting hit, you learn more about your enemy and unlock the true way to defeat it: absorption. The better you perform, the easier it will be to absorb it.

Absorbing enemies will grant the best rewards. I took inspiration on this performance system from the Devil May Cry series with its style points.

Of course there's much more to it, but this is the main concept for how the combat is designed. Sure, you can button-mash and move forward if you want, but you'll have a harder time doing that over time as you may lack important skills/upgrades you obtain by Absorbing.

What’s been a unique challenge in creating this game so far?

The hardest part to figure out for me is how to do the backgrounds and the style of the environments.

There are a number of factors making environments particularly difficult. First, I'm just not that good at this particular aspect of design. The simplistic forms of the characters also makes it hard to do something that is cool looking, because I have to make sure it's not not distracting or make you lose the character, and has to be able to show flat black and/or white silhouettes. As it stands right now, I think that my backgrounds still need work, and if the project moves forward we would need a proper artist for this kind of task.

Also, the non-combat part is very bare bones and too simple. There's more to think about, and a proper level designer would be needed as well.

Are you planning on showcasing Worldless at any upcoming conventions?

We have no plans to move around and show the prototype at the moment. We will be posting a few more things on Twitter. Any news we may have, we will make sure to say it on Twitter.

If people have burning questions that we can answer or you are interested in helping publish the project, you can contact us at worldless.game@gmail.com

I'd like to thank Mr. Roset for taking the time to answer some of my questions, as well as showcasing some of his early work and development processes. If you're interested in keeping an eye on the project, you can follow the Worldless Twitter account here!