Alterium Shift Is A Super NES-Inspired RPG With Three Different Story Paths

This looks fantastic. Exactly my type of game.

Would have been my type of game when I was younger, just don't have the attention span for these types of games now. (as I found out with Octopath Traveler)
Looks great.

This Pyra has red hair too!

Oh hey, I was just looking at this yesterday! This was actually made in Smile Game Builder from what I've seen, and it's mighty impressive for that tool.

Looks great! Reminds me more of a PS1 RPG than a SNES one, but the character style and font is like straight out of something like Secret of Mana.

Thanks for the heads 'up, I wish-listed it on Steam. The game looks cool.

Love that isometric in 3D look, it's difficult to do right...it almost looks like they're using rendering tricks rather than building everything that way.

The wavy trees look kinda funny, though.

@Asaki Yeh, that's a real pet peeve of mine: "We have to make our graphics more engaging... I know, we'll make things that sometimes move just move all the time in an unrealistic manner".

I love the art style, it brings back a lot of great memories.

However I fear, this might be just a average clone of 16-but RPGs, which ignores the improvements of the last decades.

@Bunkerneath Been sobering to realize this myself. I played the heck out of every RPG back in the day, but now I just cannot get through them. The grind ends up killing it for me. I really want to finish DQ 11, but I am at the point that I will have to grind for a bit and it just isn't worth it. I'd give anything for devs to offer an option to just let me level up if I so chose so I could move on with the game.

I can't believe they misspelled Pyra's name on her character reveal in the trailer (17 seconds in).

Looks like a nice end of system life rpg. Too many heavy hitters to finish right now though.

Has a bit of the SquareEnix HD-2D look. Only without some of the lighting/texture effects. I'll keep an eye out for this one.

I like that they took a stab at HD-2D but without the excessive bloom and similar effects. In fact it looks better than Square games, it doesn't seem to have as much of a flat stickers in a diorama effect.

Very impressive graphics... Definitely captures the era of JRPGs it's going for. Gameplay seems up to snuff. I don't know if I'd play each character's story due to time constraints in my life, unless each character's story is short enough for me to get through. I'll still keep an eye out regardless.

@Bunkerneath I tried to get into Octopath. Couldn’t. Thought it was going to be a good RPG for me as I loved games like Golden Sun or Chrono Trigger. The branching story lines were not for me. I couldn’t get into the story. Unoriginal. Oh well. Maybe this one will be better

Yes yes yes, more of this!
Octopath traveler was already amazing, nice to see more games like this.

Loving the Quintet-Soul-Blazer-Trilogy-esque font to this, as well as the look of it.

@Piyo Hello, developer here! Thank you! We hope to alleviate a few of those concerns by providing players with some quality of life features, like a world map that has quest markers and plans for ways to fast travel. We are always looking at player feedback to hopefully hit a sweet spot. We have a new demo coming out in about a month on steam for those who want to (or able to) try out some of the new features we're working on.

@PeterAndCompany I know right?! Oh man, you don't even know how much it pains me that we let that slip. x_x

@SmaggTheSmug Thank you, we like to think we've hit a sweet spot with keeping the nostalgic look while upping the visual fidelity with the use of a modern 3D engine. We're glad you enjoy the look of it.

@MeloMan Our plans are to have each character's playthrough average around 10-15 hours of game time, assuming you don't try to finish all side quests /content. Of course its hard to say in our current state of development what exact numbers will be.

@belmont Thank you so much for the wishlist on steam, this is the #1 way to support the game right now and we deeply appreciate it.

@DrassRay Always glad to have a response from a dev, so thank you! That's not too bad... Will playing through all 3 character's stories net a "true ending," or a comprehensive ending? If so that'll probably boost my chances of playing all three character's stories.

The art style had that combined Mana, Lufia, and Breath of Fire look while the battle system is turn based similar to Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy. Definitely an RPG I want to see more of.

@MeloMan My pleasure! Without giving too much away, we definitely plan to have some incentives (more than one) for players to play all 3 character paths.

@DrassRay HAHA, no worries dude! I've been a comic artist for 20 years now and I sometimes don't find typos in my work until someone points it out YEARS down the road. Always kicking myself for never catching them sooner, but there inevitably will be those that slip through.

If anything it just means you'll by hyper-aware of any potential typos in the final product, so it's all good! Looking forward to trying this out when it hits Switch. You thinking of offering a demo on the eShop when you have the chance?

@PeterAndCompany Lol! Happy to hear that we're not alone! We'll definitely keep a better look out for those pesky typos.

As far as a switch demo, I think that would be a good idea, but can't say for sure when that might happen.

@DrassRay I don't know anything about the development/publishing process, but I know plenty of games on the eShop have demos released ahead of the official launch of the game. Though I'm not sure if they have any restrictions on how far ahead of launch you could release a demo or things like that, so it might depend on when you plan on releasing the Switch port.

Might be worth looking into, particularly if you've already got a demo on Steam almost ready to go!

It does capture the SNES aesthetic, but the way the trees and similar plants move seem unnatural. They remind me of pulsating alien parts. Other than that, it looks good.

@umbreon_sylveon I had a similar issue with Octopath. The individual stories had interesting aspects, but because they never really intersected or had any stakes to them so I quit.

@PeterAndCompany Heard. It's only a matter of time, I think. There's some hoops we have to get through at the moment. Thanks again!

@umbreon_sylveon Our game will feature a cohesive story, and their relationship to each other will be meaningful. Without spoiling too much, the core differences between each characters path will be how the group meets back up after they are split up at the beginning of the game, and of course, the character you choose to play as will have their own flavor to the interactions and choices throughout their path.

This is the best RPG trailer I've seen in a long while, it doesn't try to sell me on the epic story with a bunch of dramatic cutscenes and cuts to gameplay. Good trailer.

I'll keep an eye out for this one.

However, big point for using that classic Enix font, I recognize those letters anywhere after a lifetime of playing and replaying Illusion of Gaia.

Oh! Nice example of a game that looks like Octopath should.

@Moshugan was going to say the exact same thing. Early PS1 RPGs looks very much like this, pixel art with some basic 3D polygon design. Love the style