Originally announced last month, Ubisoft has shared more details about upcoming RPG Child Of Light, with a demo in Ubisoft’s Digital Day, and a talk in the GDC Europe panel. The game will have a style akin to a children’s storybook and game mechanics lifted from JRPGs. The game is coming to Windows, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Wii U, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.
Developer Patrick Plourde was on hand in GDC Europe, talking about how the game was intended to be the antithesis of the typical AAA game, and so it took on qualities that are considered feminine and soft. Ubisoft looked back at the concept drawings for early Japanese RPGs for inspiration, and thought about making a game that looked like those illustrations, instead of the final pixelated forms they actually took.
Plourde also makes reference to the Golden Age of Illustration. This was an actual period between the 1880s to 1920s, when US magazines were host to a beautiful range of illustrations from the finest artists of the time, influencing the culture and society of the time. They didn’t cite examples, but I would have to guess they must have games like Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy in mind. I can certainly see seasoned artists like Yoshitaka Amano finding a common source of inspiration from it.
The game runs on Ubi Art Framework, will have side scrolling sections and turn based battles. He describes it as somewhere between Limbo and Final Fantasy 6, and it will be a downloadable game (perhaps hinting it won’t be a very big game size-wise, although this may not be an indication of how many hours of gameplay it will have).
Plourde also talks up how woman-centric the game is. Not only is it a coming-of-age story for a young woman, they have 12 women making the game, comprising one third of the team.
The game demo shows that there will be no random encounters. As soon as you touch an enemy you enter battle, and the battle system itself is similar to Final Fantasy’s Active Time Battle system.
You can check out a trailer for the game below.
