Anime is a rather powerful force to be reckoned with these days. Platforms such as Crunchyroll help the genre remain more accessible than ever now, while similar games likeGenshin Impactpull in millions of playerswith their colorful and unique style. Now,Starlight Re:Volverseeks to welcome players into its world with bright colors, MMO socialization mechanics, and, of course, an art style inspired by classic and modern anime as well as everything in between.
Recently, Game Rant got to speak to two members of the studio behindStarlight Re:Volver, Pahdo Labs, about studio head Daniel Zou’s inspirations behind the project, creative director Alijah Ladd’s process when making the characters, and how its roguelike elements are made to keep both frequent and not-so-frequent players able to pick up theindie gamewhenever the mood strikes with ease.This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What Fans Should Know About Starlight Re:Volver
Q: How did this project get started?
Zou:I originally started the project about three and a half years ago really wanting to build a product that would allow me to work on something that makes a deep connection to consumers. I was a software engineer in the tech industry before, so I was exploring all sorts of ideas from social networks and so on, but just growing up, being a gamer, and reflecting on how that was so meaningful to me… to be honest, since I grew up as a gamer, a lot of my friends and the people around me became streamers or peoplewho worked on esportsor things of that nature.
When I was doing user research with my immediate circle, my direction was very clear and I sort of ended up delving back into a childhood interest of mine that I think was my whole life until I went to college. It sort of fell away when I went to college and started to see more of the world, and I’m back into it now.
The reason why it is an anime game is because I was looking for a type of game that I felt would generally appeal to… honestly, me and my friends. We were a group of people that I think—we’re a bit younger than I think a lot of the folks that are heading studios these days, and we primarily grew up playing online games and using them as a form of connection. The group of friends playing was quite diverse, and not everyone loved games for the same reason.
A lot of folks used games, basically, as a virtual playground or a meeting spot, things like that. We want to make sure that those people would feel included. I felt that the games my friends were playing at the time,League of Legendsand so on, specifically to socialize did not really serve that purpose.
One thing I noticed is that we all loved anime, and even folks who wouldn’t really consider themselves a nerd at all, do like anime. I think it’s really become more mainstream. This was also around the time thatGenshin Impactcame out, and I was amazed at how many first-time gamers it created. I’m not sure if that’s widely reported, but I, for sure, saw that anecdotally.
We sort of set off to try to make an online multiplayer game with an anime art style without honestly knowing how hard that is. All of those words presented extreme challenges, especially the anime part, as we’re a studio that is not based in Asia. Getting people who can create things like that is hard to find. We went forward for quite a bit and then when Alijah joined us I think he really leveled us up with some of the more… I guess an authentic and firsthand connection to the IP.
Ladd:In my past experience, even in leadership, I never really had a chance to do something that was my creative vision until Dan gave me this opportunity. Having worked in games for quite a while, and having wanted to make games my entire life, I already had some ideas ready to go. I would say thatStarlight Re:Volver, in a way, was kind of just living in my heart for a very, very long time, and then this was our chance to kind of bring it out.
Q: What anime and video games helped inspire you to makeStarlight Re:Volver?
Zou:A lot of that stuff is Alijah’s childhood, so, he can talk about that.
Ladd:You see that, I think, when you look at the art and you play the game, there are remnants of my childhood spent in the arcade andgrowing up on shonen anime, and you see the influence of my path, and you see the influence of our art director’s path, too, very clearly. Despite us all being from very different backgrounds in the Pahdo team, a lot of us have crossover in those shared experiences, and I think that withStarlight Re:Volverwe’d be lying if we said we’re doing something brand-new that’s never been done before creatively.
Instead, what we’re trying to do, actually, is take our favorite things about what we grew up on and what we love, and then put a fresh spin on it and make it feel familiar and fresh. Hopefully, I mean, to me, the ultimate success would be that when players play it they experience the same feelings that I had when I saw these things for the first time growing up.
Now it’s a different generation, and there’s so much beauty in my path and what I saw in late-90s, early-2000s anime until now. There’s still so much to be shared with new generations, and it will feel so fresh to them, and it will feel so nostalgic to my generation. That’s essentially what we’re trying to do. I think that premise is simple, but there is that intention underneath it all.
Q: What benefits are you hoping to take fromStarlight Re:Volvergoing early access next year?
Zou:Honestly, as a new studio, I think we are sort of taking advantage of the fact that there are not really high expectations from us upfront, and we’ve used that as a way to engage with potential players upfront, share early peeks at the game, and bring people in to playtest the game well before I think other studios would feel comfortable sharing their work.
I think early access just plays into that. I think, for our first game, to get our best chance at making it as compelling as possible, we just want to take advantage of the fact that we can bring the community in and co-develop with them. I think it’s kind of a limited-time opportunity until you get a bit larger and have the scrutiny of the public, which makes things a little bit more challenging.
Q: What hopes do you have forStarlight Re:Volverin terms of connecting players, and connecting to the players?
Zou:ForStarlight Re:Volver, I’m hoping to provide a social online experience that has the fun of a co-op game that you would see on Steam today with the meaning of a persistent online game that you would see from an old-school MMO ora game likeWorld of Warcraft. When I was growing up, I really used online games as a vehicle to connect with people and honestly just to grow up and learn more about the world and how to be a human being.
I didn’t have too many opportunities to do anything other than I guess go to school, couldn’t afford to do that much stuff outside. I just learned so much from playing games. I felt like games were reality back then; the stakes were high and those high stakes and that sort of large amount of meaning allowed me to grow as a kid, right? That’s how I think games can really impact people, and I think because it’s such a meaningful world if you mix a bit of social, meaning, and status, all those things together, I think that is a recipe to create meaningful relationships as well.
I think a lot of multiplayer online games—because they’re kind of missing one of those key aspects—they’re more so turning into single-player games, where you’re just surrounded by other people. You really need all of them together to get people over the hump and get them to actually engage with others.
Starlight Re:Volver’s Characters and World
Q: Let’s talk about the magical girls in the game, who all have their own weapons and they’ve got a ton of personality. Were there any specific inspirations behind each of the playable characters?
Ladd:Definitely. We knew… I guess I wouldn’t say that Effy is our main character so to speak. Our first four characters that we are going to be releasing on early access are all equal parts main character, but Effy was the first one that we designed. The way that we approached it with her is thatStarlight Re:Volveris a very colorful, festive, big, and explosive world, so we don’t want a heroine who’s going to come in and be the opposite of that. Like, “Who represents this world that we’ve created? Who is big, explosive, loud, and colorful?” That’s Effy, and that’s kind of how we approached her.
In terms of specifics to your question, characters that might have influenced her design… We actually looked a lot at more traditionally male, shonen personalities. There’sa little bit of Monkey D. Luffyand his recklessness, and there’s a little bit of Kagura fromGintamain the form of her naivety, but ultimately acting like she doesn’t care much about anything but beneath it all. She’s actually quite a profound person who will always pull through for her friends, so Effy’s kind of like that. She’s our spin on a shonen protagonist.
Q: One of the playable characters that I’m really interested in is Ren because in a lot of magical girl shows, it’s an all-girl cast. What was the drive behind adding a magical boy to the roster?
Ladd:Internally, we actually just call Ren a magical girl, too[laughs].
Then, Vivi, our fourth character, actually identifies as male as well. Vivi, by design, is a little bit androgynous, but we have two males and two females at early access.
you may see that where our more traditionally feminine characters, like Kira, are really leaning into that mahou shoujo, magical girl, type of thing, Ren is the masculine answer to that. He is yourKamen Rider, yourPower Ranger, that kind of thing. In spirit, those genres,Kamen Riderand magical girls, are very similar in that you transform, and you enter another dimension or another world. You become a stronger, more unleashed, or truer version of yourself.
For Ren, that’s how he transforms into almost a superhero-inspired character against Kira transforming into more of a celestial, kind of princessy, monarch-type character. We wanted Ren in there to provide a bit more balance to the cast and round it out so that there’s a character in that first four for everybody.
Q: Was there anything else about Vivi and Kira you two wanted to talk about?
Ladd:Yes, we’ve got four playable characters planned for early access. Like I mentioned, Effy is sort of ouranswer to the shonen protagonist, and then you have Kira who’s sort of the lone wolf rival archetype. You have Ren, who is sort of the mentor or ‘big brother’ type of character. He’s got life experience and he looks after the squad, and then you have Vivi, who is the most brilliant of the four.
The way that they transform is a reflection of their true self, so when Effy transforms she has themes that are inspired by bunnies pounding mochi on the moon in Japanese folklore. That’s why she’s got the hammer, that’s why she’s got the bow that looks like big bunny ears. A lot of her moves are bunny-themed, and she is meant to feel festive; she’s meant to feel celebratory. She is in a way largely inspired by Tanabata, the Japanese festival, and actually, one of the character design inspirations for Effy, funny enough, was Jirachi, the Pokemon.
Kira, of course, she’s kind of got more of a princess or monarch thing going on, but then when you get to know her character a little bit deeper you see that it’s a bit of a facade. She became a Diver very much stuck in the cold shadow of her sister who was a superstar and celebrity, and no matter how perfect Kira tried to be, it was just never enough. She might be a princess or a queen, but her sister is a goddess.
That’s the kind of dynamic that we’ve established there, and then Ren, we talked about him a little bit, but very much largely inspired byKamen Rider,Power Rangers, that type of aesthetic. That’s also, again, a little bit of a facade, because he’s made mistakes, he’s allowed people to get hurt… he wishes he could go back, but he can’t. To him, he doesn’t really truly believe that he’s a hero, but he puts on the mask because somebody has to do it, and if he can inspire even one kid or make one kid feel better about what they’re doing, then, to him, that’s worth it.
Then we have Vivi, who’s named Vivi for several reasons, but one of them is a throwback to Vivi fromFinal Fantasybeing one of the original mage nukers. Vivi is very much our long-range spellcasting, explosive, blow-up-your-graphics-card-type character. I probably won’t talk about it too much today, but we do have plans on the horizon for characters past that as well.
Q: The specific focus on multiplayer with the two different worlds within the roguelike genre is really interesting. How did you guys tackle the multiplayer inStarlight Re:Volverspecifically?
Zou:Are you more interested in that from a design standpoint or from a technical standpoint?
I’d say design standpoint, in terms of difficulty balancing and stuff like that.
Ladd:Yeah, we’re a bit of an interesting hybrid where we have this social space, which we want to feel very reminiscent of early-2000s MMOs where people just hang out, get together, talk, and make connections and stuff. So much of the gameplay just took place in the hub, or in town, and it felt familiar and cozy. We want that aspect, but when you go into a dungeon,Starlight Re:Volveris pretty challenging. It’s a more challenging game than I think the visuals would have you believe.
For us, I think maybe that’s just in part because of where we come from in terms of design principles and preferences. We want our characters to feel like there’s a lot of depth to them, and that there’s always more to discover and master with them, and we alsowant the replayability that roguelikes will offer.
We want you to come out of a dungeon run and speculate like… “How could I have done the run differently? If only I had mastered this character a little better, if only I had chosen a different loadout of Charms” (our randomized power-ups). “If only I had just used different tactics, I could have done better,” and that type of replayability, which is almost arcade-like than it is… I suppose… conventional progression you would normally see in an MMO sort of thing. It’s very gameplay-driven.
I guess the way that we look at it is that we want our progression balance to lean largely in favor of gameplay in that we reward skill, and if you’re really, really good at the game, you’ll still do better than a player who’s five hours into their own progression with better gear. Maybe not 10 hours. There’s going to be some sort of balance, but that’s the idea. That your skill in gameplay takes you a very, very long way in this game.
Then, yeah, juxtaposing that, we have our town, and it is kind of a stark contrast, but honestly I think the contrast might make it memorable. We’re going to be pulling in, hopefully, a pretty wide audience where we have players who are up for a challenge in the dungeon aspect, and we have players who want a more cozy, social hub experience. How exactly those groups of players will combine I’m curious to see, but we’re pretty confident in our formula.
Zou:I do want to tie it back to some of the original aspirational goals from the founding of the studio that ended up informing this… I guess unique agglomeration? It’s not really traditional game design, and we’re putting a lot of things that are quite expensive to implement together into one package.
We wanted to make a game that you’re able to imagine a diverse friend group playing. What that means is we have to make something that is compelling for both folks who might like gameplay with a ton of room for mastery,likeValorantorLeague of Legends, and/or social games, and people who play social games for more of a collection, decoration, or customization aspect. That’s exactly what Nishi Island Metropolis provides.
What I’m really excited about is when you put these two properties into one game, it means that the group no longer has to choose between things like, “Hey, should weplayMinecrafttoday? Or should we playValorant?” There are definitely some people who are like, “Oh my gosh, I hope that we playMinecraftorDress to Impresstoday and notValorantbecause I’m tired of my friends flaming me, but they all loveValorantfor some reason.”
We’re hoping that when we put these features into one game, we can add sort of cooperative progression elements that are sort of tying the progress in the two areas together in some useful ways so that folks that are really good at some of the mini-games in NIM, which can be more casual, puzzle-based, and make a unique contribution just like people who can make a unique contribution if they’re just really mechanically skilled and can carry your teammates.
Q: Now you have me curious. What role does the Nishi Island Metropolis play in terms of the story and balance between these worlds? Is it where you can go explore for extra lore or is it about being a break from the action?
Ladd:That’s a good question. I think that our aspirations for NIM are quite high. There’s a lot that we know we’d like to do with it. Even after we launch, we want to continue to expand NIM into what feels like a very dynamic and living place. It’s a little bit of all of the above. It’s a place where you’ll go to fulfill core gameplay needs like crafting new equipment and stuff along those lines. It’s also a place where you can experience, passive world-building; just walking around town and learning about our world, you can see different things.
There’s a statue of Kira’s sister in Sakino Park and each character will give their own take on that, and tell you more about the world if you interact with it, that kind of thing. We have different minigames… you can playPop Pop Bunny. Not common knowledge, but Pahdo Labs has released a game calledPop Pop Bunny and we have it playable in an arcade cabinet in NIM.
There are lots of interesting small things to do in NIM, and ultimately we wanted it to be stuff that’s better to do with other people. Also, we want NIM to be a place that changes over time; it changes with the seasons and there’s always something new to come back to and check in on. We know that we also want to expand out in the future outside of NIM, which is Nishi Island Metropolis into the greater Nishi Island. It’s a much larger island with mountainous areas, a volcano, hot springs, and plenty more that we can potentially grow out to in the future as well.
Zou:When I heard about the concept of NIM I was really excited about it partially because of how it grounded the fantasy. We knew we wanted an over-the-top game where you had these really powerful hero characters that make you feel really cool and explosive when you play as them when you fight enemies in these dream worlds, and explore them together. It’s like a party, but that can also create quite a pretty shallow fantasy if you just leave it at that. What I really liked about NIM, and the dungeons, and how it all ties together… first of all, it just ties really well with the gameplay. There’s a hangout world, and there’s a combat world, and they’re distinct; even in the fantasy, they’re distinct.
You’re just normal people in a plausibly realistic metropolis, and there are these curious devices called Re:Volvers that allow these, I guess, special teenagers to transport themselves into dream worlds and become superheroes and magical girls. I think that just adds another layer of relatability; you sort of become your true self… expressing that player feeling.
Q: Do either of you have a favorite of the playable characters, and is that because of their kit or their design?
Zou:I like Vivi because of the design. I think I see myself in him.
Ladd:I really like different aspects of all of our characters, but I don’t want to give you a boring answer and say I like them all equally. I think that Effy’s form in So Mi is my favorite transformation out of all of our characters because it tells you so much not just about her and what she’s about but aboutStarlight Re:Volver; her transformation specifically, I think. It just really encapsulates so much about what there is to love in our world and shows it to you right there in the character design.
Gameplay-wise, I really love to play Kira because I love a ranged character. Kira fights from a distance, she doesn’t like to get her hands dirty, and she has a lot of sort of acrobatic evasive stuff that she can do as well, which makes her really fun. I think players will find different things resonate with them; Effy is really explosive and close-ranged, Kira’s a little more careful and long-ranged, Vivi is just really chaotic in a good way, and then Ren has a very specific set of mechanics where he can alternate between being a melee and a ranged character.
He has a lot of different abilities that involve utility, support, damage—all sorts of things. Ren is just an interesting character. With Ren in particular we knew we wanted characters that leaned into the support archetype, and traditionally a lot of games have struggled to make the support archetype really, truly fun to play because it’s just not the ace, it’s not the one coming in and, you know, scoring the points.
There are ways to make a support character shine, like being able to allow them to move in really fun and interesting ways, and that’s something that we try to do with Ren. The short answer to your question is, I love Effy’s visual design and I love Kira’s gameplay.
How the Mechanics of Starlight Re:Volver Balance Each Other
Q: Something Ladd mentioned earlier was interesting—he mentioned how in the Nishi Island Metropolis you have to craft new equipment and obviously the Charms are randomized each run. What is the balance in terms of having to craft new equipment and the more randomized aspects ofStarlight Re:Volver?
Ladd:That’s actually something we’re actively figuring out at this stage of development, but we know we want Charms to feel really impactful. It’s almost like adeckbuilding aspect to the game… you could look at it that way, whereas the gear you’re crafting in the “out-game,” for lack of a better term, is kind of your permanent progression. That’s stuff that sticks with you, that’s your reward for putting time into the game.
I think that’s kind of, like I was saying before, the most decisive things in your success in this game come down to your individual mechanics as a player, how you understand the systems, the character you’re playing, the enemies you’re fighting, and the counter-play between them. That’s key. I think secondary to that would be your Charm loadout, and then tertiary to that would sort of be your long-term progression, which is definitely helping you but it is more minor than those first two.
Zou:I’d like to add that, going back on the topic of a game the whole friend group can play, I think we tiered the power of these various systems intentionally. I think inmore traditional multiplayer RPGs, there’s a very, very heavy emphasis on time investment and progression, and it’s almost like you go through this extremely time-consuming and linear path, and you basically have to be within the same two to three hours of progression to even play with your friends. We were not really fans of that, you know?
We found that our options for games to play with our friends werelargely limited to MMOs, where we would basically only play at the same time, which is not very enjoyable, or competitive PVP games which we can sort of pick up and people can continue to play, but then they’re PVP and competitive. With roguelike-esque elements, we found opportunities to really take a lot of hard segmentation of the playerbase through time investment out, and maybe make it so that, if you’re within the same 20- or 30-hour band, you can plausibly play with each other and have equipment that’s reasonably close so you can play together.
That just makes the game all the more accessible to friend groups, and I guess long-lived within those groups as people inevitably invest more and less time. We didn’t really want to fragment people.
The other thing is that the power of Charms was really exciting to us because it means that okay, maybe you’re someone who for whatever reason doesn’t have time to sink eight hours a day into the game like some of your other hardcore friends. You can still produce a substantial advantage and impact for yourself by just being really crafty or thoughtful with the Charms that you select, and there’s some randomization involved as well, so maybe you’re just lucky. You can have just as much game impact or even more game impact than someone on your team who has spent 50 more hours than you grinding for equipment and we think that’s really important for making the team experience feel good.
Q: Are there any solo or single-player aspects toStarlight Re:Volver?
Ladd:This is a really interesting question. You can playStarlight Re:Volversolo—nothing is stopping you except for, I would say, difficulty. Traditionally, in games, people who want to play alone are either really casual or really hardcore. InStarlight Re:Volver, you can play alone but it is more difficult. It’s definitely best enjoyed and easier played with a full party, and we had to make a conscious decision when we first went this route. We knew that if you want to be better together, it has to be worse alone.
We knew that, for us, being social is at the core of it all, so we do want to be better together withStarlight Re:Volver. To add to that, to go back to an earlier question, that is part of the purpose of NIM. We want to give players the tools to be able to find people to play with and set them up for that and make it quite easy for them, so that’s another reason for NIM.
Q: How exactly are you making it soStarlight Re:Volvercan allow a player who spends 15 hours a week on the game to jump into a game with a friend who hardly has any time to play with no trouble?
Ladd:I think with a lot of existing online games, they tend to have kind of one approach, which is your more arcade-like approach, where everyone has fairly even progression from the very beginning. That’s like games that are completely fair, free-for-all,likeFall GuysorRocket League.
Then you have hybrid games likeLeague of Legendswhere everyone has a fresh slate, but you also have auxiliary systems like runes that do feed into your overall progression. It’s sort of a hybrid, but it still probably leans toward what you’re doing in-game as the most important thing, and then you have games that are extremely progression-dependent like a lot of classic MMOs.
Unfortunately, those types of games have to find artificial solutions to allow players to play together, like down-leveling players or just flattening stat curves. I think we fall somewhere between the hybrid approach and, realistically speaking, we do want to lean more toward player skill being the dominant factor, like over 50 percent. I don’t know if it’s 70/30, 60/40 in favor of player skill or anything like that, but it’s definitely over 50 percent, and in that sense that allows different people to just play together regardless of their status and progression.
Q: For fans who may not be sold onRe:Volveryet, how would you pitch the game to them?
Zou:I think there are two audiences… if you’re someone who likes playing ARPGs or roguelikes, this is the ARPG or roguelike that’s not dark fantasy. It’s bright and vibrant, and you feel good about the world, and you feel good about the characters. If you’re someone who plays bright fantasy,feel-good games likeKenshiorBreath of the Wild, this is your opportunity to play a game that has sort more complex combat systems and a greater path to mastery—especially, in my opinion, ways that you can master team play, which is under-invested in design problem.
[END]
