Lotia: The JRPG of Your Dreams? Featuring Music From the Composer of Dungeons & Doritos!

Posted by Cat on November 11, 2015

If you’re a fan of JRPGs and/ or love the awesome music of Dungeons & Doritos – there’s a crowdfunding project that warrants your attention. Lotia is a JRPG-style game set in an oceanic realm of Heavensbreak – home to fencing, fighting, torture, etc. but also dreams. The world itself is held together by all us “unawakened dreamers” out there. Some dreamers can “awaken” and lucidly dream themselves into this bold new land of magic. Check out the Kickstarter here, and learn more below.

The setting of Lotia isn’t newly formed – it’s built on the rich lore and history of the underground MMORPG, Underlight which launched in 1998 and is still going! Underlight is a genre-breaking MMO rooted in actual player-driven roleplaying. That’s nearly 20 years of gamer-created history and world building that’s influenced Lotia‘s story, locale, and more. The game itself is the first single-player project to take place in the world of Underlight, and doesn’t require past knowledge of the series.

In Lotia, dreamers are in service of The Dominion, but you play as one of the few not under their control: Reef O’Meara – captain of the smuggling vessel, the Surprise. While the world was inspired by Underlight, Lotia itself also draws inspiration from Ultima, Secret of Mana, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Big Trouble in Little China, and the Princess Bride to name a few, and the creators hope to bring the spark of what they love most about these highlights of pop culture into the title.

The team behind Lotia is Crayon Ponyfish is a small group of former Underlight developers and this Kickstarter sees them looking not to fund the completion of the game, but to assist in pulling in artists and polish its look and sound: sprites, score, user interface, etc. As such, their goal is very much in reach: $10,000. Among the creators their working with to bring the game to life are “Personigo de la Cefo” a well-known face from the RPG Maker community, who’s designing the battle sprites, and Lotia‘s score is by Ryan McQuinn – who Nerdy Show fans may know as lead composer of the score to Dungeons & Doritos.

In the spirit of Underlight, Lotia Kickstarter backers can influence the development of the game by supporting at tiers that allow them to work with the Pony Crayonfish team to create or name locations, items, enemies and more. An art and lore book is also being offered up as a .pdf, but will be upgraded to an expanded hardback edition if they meet a modest stretch goal.

Lotia is being developed on the RPG Maker MV engine and is being produced for Windows and OSX with iPhone and Android support to follow. The Kickstarter campaign ends November 22nd at 10pm EST.

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About Cat

Cat is Executive Producer of The Nerdy Show Network as well as Lead Host of the titular Nerdy Show podcast and one of the site's founders. Her illustration, graphic design, and writing both journalistic and fictitious have appeared in various publications and public spaces.