Hello, I’m Jérôme from 1P2P Studio and we developed the RPG brawler Young Souls. We posted a few months ago about the game’s bosses, and we’re back today to finally announce the game’s launch date! Get ready to slay some goblins soon when Young Souls releases on March 10. To celebrate, I’ll write a bit about what makes this game so special.
A 2D brawler, yes – but also…
With Young Souls, our initial goal was to create the ideal beat ’em up game. Baptiste (my co-founder of 1P2P) and I are very fond of classic 2D brawlers and we wanted to mix influences and concepts that were close to our hearts in order to create the core gameplay of Young Souls.
Two opposite worlds
The Young Souls universe is divided into two distinct worlds: the human world and the goblin world. Our heroes belong to the human world and you will start your adventure with Jenn and Tristan in their daily life before an unfortunate event opens a door to the goblin world. This mysterious door was discovered in the basement of their house and will be a key location in the game. Keeping the duality between the two worlds was key for us, and you will be able to travel between them throughout the game.
In the human world, you can move freely from the twins’ mansion to the town of Portsborough, where you’ll find plenty of shops and locals to talk to. In the basement of the city is a path to the Goblin Market, where hidden friendly Goblins will offer you materials to overcome the difficulties you will encounter in the many dungeons of the Goblin World.
In fact, the goblin world is where the “action” part of the game is. You will explore and unravel its dangers as well as its many secrets. As you can imagine, the further you progress through the goblin world, the tougher your enemies will be. In order to manage the game’s raging hordes of enemies, we’ve built a progression and leveling system close to what an RPG offers.
The Central Influence of RPGs
In Young Souls, your heroes are constantly evolving. Each time you level up, your stats increase, provided you sleep first.
Equipment also helps improve your stats. From dungeon to dungeon, you will find new weapons and combat equipment. Each gear is unique and offers exclusive features that allow you to customize your experience and progress your character the way you want. Additionally, most gear can be upgraded through the many traders in the Goblin Market, which can improve stats and unlock new abilities.
Twins’ abilities are entirely derived from their gear, and we’ve created a system that doesn’t limit you to just one way to level up. You can change a character’s constitution at any time – for example, going from a light magician who attacks from a distance to a heavy soldier with a hammer who favors close combat. Depending on the upcoming enemies, it is quite easy to adapt accordingly.
In single player mode, you can equip both characters individually and switch between them at any time. This unlocks a system of devastating combos through the use of complementary weapons and spells.
Here are some patterns for the twins’ armor and hats.
Kill goblins and look cool doing it
In Young Souls, another important feature for us was to make gear as visually distinct and visible in-game as possible. So visual customization was an important part of the development process. We wanted our heroes to keep their teenage looks even while wearing their battle gear. Following this idea, we created two co-existing customization systems: one that allows purely cosmetic clothing customization and allows you to express your own style for the heroes; and another that allows combat gear to be worn over your character’s clothing during battle. These two systems allow you to give your characters a unique look, for example by combining medieval armor with a denim jacket and high-end sneakers! We’re pretty proud of how this system works and hope you enjoy customizing your character’s appearance as much as we did when creating this feature.
Thank you very much for reading this article. We can’t wait for you to dive into the dual worlds of Young Souls on PlayStation 4 when it releases on March 10. Goodbye !
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