bit-gamer.net

A long-time member of the bit-tech forums, KayinBlack, sent me a message the other day with a very special announcement in it that I thought I’d share with you. He’s released a game.

Well, kind of. The game is still in the midst of development and Kayin is hard at work on the later stages, but he’s finally got to a stage where he’s confident enough to release a playable, fully featured demo of his creation – a SNES-style JRPG called Fatal Optimisation.

Fatal Optimisation’s story is, as you’d expect of a Japanese RPG, a long and complicated one which isn’t easily summed up in a few lines in a blog post – all of which makes it a good thing that Kayin has been developing the story over on the game's official site. He’s plotted it out in great detail, posting snippets and chapters on his blog in a way which will give you a glimpse into what’s still to come.


Kayin has been making the game in RPG Maker VX and has clearly used that toolset very well. The interface is extremely polished, with SNES-style dialogs and a snazzy battle interface that’s incredibly easy to use. The music and graphics are fantastic too, perfectly capturing the feel of a 16-bit JRPG. It’s obvious there’s still a bit of work to do on the game – there’s no introduction, for example, so the opening does feel a bit abrupt – but as a demo it serves as a good example of what the finished game will be like and what Kayin is hoping to achieve.

I’ve still not had an awful lot of time to invest in Fatal Optimisation myself, but even in just the half-hour that I spent with it this morning it still compared favourably to some of my other favourite indie JRPGs, like Endless Nova. I very much recommend downloading the demo (40MB) and having a look for yourselves, then passing your feedback to Kayin in the forums. Game development isn’t easy, so I’m sure he’d appreciate all the thoughts you can offer!

You can download the Fatal Optimisation demo from here.