Take the whimsy of Ni no Kuni, combine it with cel-shaded exploration of Dark Cloud and throw in the kung-fu mysticism of Avatar: The Last Airbender and you have something that resembles Shiness. Or at least what French developer Ynnis Interactive hopes the Shiness will be if they meet their $100,000 Kickstarter goal.
Pronounced “Shyness” the game follows the story of a group of 5 adventurers in the world of Mahera. Mahera’s world is made-up of disparate floating islands called Meteora; a situation that came about after the planet’s spiritual energy “Shi” was depleted, splitting the planet apart. The three races of the world, Humans, the bear-like Shiek and the fox-like Waki, now live separately.
The game looks to be a 20 hour long RPG with integrated combat and field exploration. How does that work? Well, combat in the game takes place in real-time on the field-exploration map but in a twist battles play out like a 1v1 fighting game with support characters casting spells from the sidelines. Which skills they cast is dependent on how you set-up their AI.
Shiness is currently under development on Unreal Engine 3 for Windows PC and Mac (OS X) and a manga companion is also being penned. It appears to be quite deep into development, with the developer estimating that they only need 6 months of full-time work to finish it. If it sounds like something you’ be interested in backing head on over the the Kickstarter page for more details. In the meantime here’s a trailer.
Shehzaan Abdulla
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