The minimalist RPG adventure Little Devil Inside is going to hit big this 2021and GamesRadar shared their design ethos and ideas that went behind their gameplay decisions. Little Devil Inside is an action-adventure RPG developed by Neostream Interactive.
The game has you gear up and prepare before setting out and exploring the world. You’ll go on research expeditions, find new locations and creatures. The game is much more focused on the journey than the destination with plenty of travel and events that occur as you do so being one of the main features of the game. While some have drawn parallels to Monster Hunter-esque elements of preparation, realistically this is much more targeted at the adventurers out there. This was something that was supposedly releasing this July 2021.
1:50 In a recent interview, Neostream spoke a bit more about the design philosophy behind Little Devil Inside. The world of the game, while spanning muddy swamps, vast deserts, murky ocean depths, and icy tundras is not actually as large compared to many of the triple-A games according to Creative Director Kody Lee. They didn’t actually set out to make the game with sort of an epic scope instead, they opted for a much more compact experience with plenty of variety in setting, in order to let players’ imagination run wild.
John Choi, Neostream’s Business Development Director, mentioned that what they actually wanted to do was to kind of recreate the nostalgia of buying a game at your local game shop, where the only thing you had to go on was the box art. It was cool back in the day when you just walked into a game shop, look at whatever was cool, and picked it up because you were attracted to the art you saw. And now we are in the day and age where we need to know about games inside and out before we even decide to buy them. The point is, John Choi said, that back in the day, the cover art often just had characters and world at a glance but somehow encouraged the players to picture the game in their imaginations.
In order to achieve this kind of nostalgia, he said they embraced minimalism as their main design concept. Stating that the game isn’t just about killing demons and saving the world. It’s about telling stories about people with unusual jobs such as monster hunting and depicting what happens in their day-to-day life while doing so.
In the game, you take on the role of Billy, a half-decent swordsman contracted to make expeditions as part of Professor Vincent and Doctor Oliver’s research team. Your main goal is to aid in creating an encyclopedia of all the creatures and beings you find along the way, often stumbling across influential figures and various organizational bodies with discreet and secretive interests.
Although the game combines action, exploration, survival, and RPG elements, they are all toned down as to not get in the way of the overall progression. On survival mechanics specifically, Neostream said that they don’t intend to make survival gameplay the focus that it becomes a repetitive chore. They also stated that they don’t intend to go too far with the RPG features to be compared with hardcore grinding hack-and-slash RPG games. They instead want to express more with less and leave some room for players to fill it in for themselves. They then reiterated the game is about the journey more so than working towards an ultimate goal such as a powerful sword or the ultimate gem.
The UI is kept as minimalistic and clean as possible, Neostrem opting to use sound and character design to convey incoming dangers or survival needs. Fast travel is also not an option. Instead, you have a train that travels between the different regions on the map with curious and deadly events having a chance to take place while you do so. This sounds quite different but really cool. As gamers, we are very used to working towards typical goals, destinations and end-game activities. Sometimes just exploring cool open worlds and having that as sort of prime driver for the game is something interesting.
