Recently, Bombservice has released their latest game Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight (Momodora: RUtM) for Steam. Their new title continues the series tradition of a heroine who braves danger alone for the greater good. Much like its predecessors, it features a 2D world inspired by games of the 8 bit and 16 bit era respectively.
RUtM isn’t just another action platformer as indicated by the game’s about section:
Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight explores a cursed land in decline. Evil spreads, the dead rise, and corruption reigns. Hope is but a faded memory for all but one, a priestess named Kaho from the village of Lun. An audience with her majesty, the queen, would surely save the land–but time is short and each night darker than the last.
RUtM is the fourth entry in the Momodora series, a side-scrolling platformer focused on action gameplay, with melee combos, dodge mechanics and a plethora of items and spells to unleash upon your enemies. Play casually for the rich setting and mysterious story or crank up the difficulty to run your reflexes through a truly brutal gauntlet.
The game is a constant, challenging foray into well animated locales and the supernatural perils they hide.
We spoke with RUtM developer/artist Rdein about the game, the series, his inspirations and even the series’ signature leaf.
JR: What inspired you to create Momodora (the series)?
Rdein: I played videogames and loved them since I was a kid. Making my own was a natural step from that. When I saw there were communities of people making their own games, many times with extremely small teams, I decided I wanted to give it a try.
JR: When did you realize that you wanted to become a developer and pursue that career?
Rdein: I used to make silly RPG Maker Games when I was much younger, but I started messing around with more serious projects when I was around high school age.
JR: When playing RUtM, a NPC jokes that fighting with a leaf must be tough. Why the leaf? It is symbolic or running joke? Note: The leaf has been each heroine’s initial and primary weapon since the first title of the series.
Rdein: There’s no deeper meaning to it. I think leaves are cool, haha. When I first created the universe, I thought it’d be nice if the characters fought using leaves and other nature-related things.
JR: RUtM continues to raise the series’s benchmark for 2D animation. Where do you feel 2D animation will peak from a design standpoint, if at all? Have we barely seen anything yet?
After much internal struggling, I managed to get the “checking shoes” animation in the game! #gamedev pic.twitter.com/SvTTU9d6Qu
— rdein (@rabbit_nabokov) January 11, 2016
Rdein: For future projects, I’d like to try higher-resolution art. If we can keep improving the art quality and animation quality, then I’ll be quite happy! I’m not sure where or when it’ll peak, but we are always trying new things on it.
JR: Whom would you say is the target audience for the Momodora series?
Rdein: I honestly don’t know, but I’d guess older people who used to play these kinds of games would be more interested in it? I don’t make games with a target audience in mind, so it’s up to anyone to enjoy it!
JR: The series is certainly no pushover. Why did you and the Bombservice team decide to make the series so difficult?
Rdein: We don’t actually make the games hard for the sake of being frustrating. Our design goal is to make games that are fun to play. For that reason, we try to include a variety of difficulty options so people less experienced with these types of games might enjoy them as well.
JR: What were some of the biggest hurdles during development of RUtM?
Rdein: Honestly, there weren’t many. It was smooth sailing!
JR: Indie games have become more popular and recognized. Indie games as they stand now provide players with levels of diversity not seen among other games. Do you believe that this will change over time or remain the norm?
Rdein: Since more people have been making games than ever before, I think it’s only natural that new ideas come in. There are also many developers who don’t cater to market demands and just do whatever they want. If this keeps up, perhaps we’ll see more of those types of games.
You can smite evil with a mighty leaf and explore a fluid 2D land in Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, now available.
