I reached out to Joseph Duke (JD), the Technical Director of Shrine’s Legacy. He graciously took the time to explain how the game was developed and shared insights into the intricacies involved in creating a game like this
Shrine’s Legacy is a loveletter to the past but a great game to try out today. I’ve tried it myself and I can see why the team has built such a dedicated following. There’s a free demo on Steam if you’re interested, and below is our interview.
GH: The inspiration from SNES is clear as day for Shrine’s Legacy. However, why that style specifically and not another bit era in gaming?
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JD: Originally Shrine’s Legacy used slightly higher resolution sprites (32×32 tiles instead of 16×16 like it does now). But we switched to SNES style a while back because it made it much easier and faster to work on the sprites. It also helps that some of our favorite games are Super Nintendo games so there’s a wealth of great references to learn from.
GH: Co-op is one of the frontline features of the game. Was that intentional from the beginning of development, or did it get added in much later?
JD: Shrine’s Legacy was inspired from many of the RPG’s Alan and I loved to play. We always wished we could play them in co-op, but it’s very rare as a feature in most of our favorite games. So, from the very beginning, we planned Shrine’s Legacy as a game you could play in co-op, even though you can also play it single-player.
GH: There’s currently a demo available on the Shrine’s Legacy Steam page. Will that get updated again before the game releases?
JD: Yes, we do plan to update it at least one more time, most likely for when we do a Steam Nextfest before launch. I don’t know how significant the changes will be yet, as the current demo is already pretty much the quality we were aiming for the final release, but we’ll see. One thing I’d really like to do is allow people to play the Nextfest demo, and then transfer their save into the full final game, similar to how the Dragon Quest XI demo worked. I think that’s a great way to deliver a lengthy demo, let people test if they enjoy the game for free, and also respect the player’s time all at once.
GH: You have put many years into Shrine’s Legacy, and it’s close to the release window. Do you think you’ll work on a sequel after this, or will you go on to other worlds?
JD: Shrine’s Legacy will always be near and dear to mine and Alan’s hearts due to how much time, effort, and learning went into the process of its creation. We plan to support it with content and fixes for some time, but for our next project we’d both love to move onto a new world with new characters and concepts.
GH: Should we expect any DLC or Expansions to come after release?
JD: As long as our launch is reasonably successful we plan to make a fair amount of DLC / updates and features for a decent amount of time after launch. Currently it’s all planned to be free, but if we ever do a paid DLC you can be sure it’ll be very substantial. Something we plan to do regardless of success is port to Switch. It won’t be a day 1 thing as we want to prioritize our PC launch first, especially considering this game is massive and it’s our first commercial game. But the plan is to focus on porting to Switch either right after we’ve handled the major bugs and feedback on launch or after the first substantial DLC. Other console ports will likely come later on in the future if everything else goes well.
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GH: How many hours will it take the average player to complete Shrine’s Legacy?
JD: 12 to 18 hours is our initial estimation, but I believe there will be a lot of variance in how long it takes based on how each individual chooses to play the game.
GH: Would you say you will stick to the 16-bit style for other games after Shrine’s Legacy is released?
JD: That’s a great question! For now I’ll just say we don’t want to feel contrained to one style or genre for every game we make. We’ll continue to prioritize pixelart for a long time, and RPGs are our main genre. But expect some more surprising and creative ideas in the future from Positive Concept Games, especially for our next project.
Shrine’s Legacy is obvious a game that the developers put heart and soul into. It’s also a game that reminds us of another time in gaming. There are plenty of games that had the similar stories that touched hearts and became huge hits, even if their art style was unconventional (Minecraft, Stardew Valley, and Terraria come to mind). I expect that we’ll see a lot more from the team and that Shrine’s Legacy will really turn heads.
