Clad in a neon-fringed overcoat and samurai’s mempo mask, tearing through groups of robotic enemies, it might not be immediately obvious that the protagonist of the upcoming action side-scrollerBlind Fate: Edo no Yamiis completely blind. For developer Troglobytes Games, this is its title’s central feature — the challenge of navigating its sci-fi urban sprawl with just four of five senses.
Beyond that feature,Blind Fatealso offers a host of enemies modeled after creaturesfrom Japanese folklore, carefully recreated by the Barcelona-based Troglobytes. Game Rant sat down with studio lead Saverio Caporusso to talk about howBlind Fate’smechanics and game world come together to create an innovative new experience for players.
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In Blind Fate, Information is King
Obviously, a blind player character posesa lot of gameplay challenges. The primary one, Caporusso said, is traversing the environment.
“The main character is a cyber samurai, so his brain can receive all sorts of environmental data. You may be able to see a static image of the game environment around you, but that image is not updated.”
For example, the player might approach a chasm that, according to the most recent environmental data collected, has a bridge spanning the gap. However, the bridge may have collapsed, and without updated data, the player would be in for a nasty surprise. To address that, the player collects environmental data fromBlind Fate’srobotic enemies. “Enemies have updatedinformation about the environment, so by defeating enemies you collect data that will help you progress,” Caporusso said.
Of course, fighting the game’s enemies is another challenge for a protagonist that can’t actually see them. The player can keep track of foes using a suite of high-tech sensors that pick up different kinds of stimuli, Caporusso said. A hearing module detects enemies with loud footsteps or whirring machinery, enemies that give off a unique odor are picked up by a smell sensor, and a thermal sensor can display heat coresfrom certain enemies. Players have to learn to pair sensors with different enemy types to deploy them effectively.
When the devs started working onBlind Fate, the player character was initially supposed to rely mainly on sound as a means of detecting enemies, Caporusso said. “Of course, you would be able to hear enemies coming towards you, so a sound sensor of some kind was an easy choice.” The decision to diversify and add more types of sensors was made to improve the overall player experience, he said.
“Just switching one sensor on and off doesn’t make for an interesting game, so we came up with the idea to make some enemies silent.”
Blind Fate’s Enemy Types are Inspired by Japanese Folktales
In addition to its unique mechanics,Blind Fatesets itself apart from other titles in the genre with its enemy design, Caporusso said. In keeping with the game’s futuristic Japanese aesthetic, the hordes of robots thrown at the player are modeled after creatures from ancient Japanese folklore. To develop each character, Troglobytes hired a writer specifically tasked with researching Japanese folktales — specifically about ghosts and demons,or yokai and kami. The writer also had to find a function for those enemies and how they would fit into the actual gameplay, Caporusso said.
“We find yokai and other folktales that have an interesting backstory, figure out how it works in the game, and create a model that fits.”
For example,Blind Fatefeatures an enemy known in Japanese folklore as the ‘wa nyudo,’ or priest wheel. In the traditional Japanese canon,this was a yokaithat appeared as a priest’s head inside a flaming oxcart wheel, said to hunt criminals. ForBlind Fate, the wa nyudo was augmented to look like a futuristic police android, Caporusso said, with a policeman’s head inside a wheel of flashing lights.
Even central game features get this folklore treatment.Blind Fate’sskill tree is a cybernetic version of an entity known as a jubokko - a tree that in Japanese folktales grew on battlefields and fed on the blood of fallen soldiers. As Caporusso said, “Our skill tree is an actual tree."
Despite their unique looks, enemies designed in-game adhere to traditional classes familiar to players, such as rangers and tanks, Caporusso said. “We wanted the enemy types to be recognizable to players because it is risky for anindie studioto change them.”
Blind Fate: Edo no Yamiis coming soon for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
