I'm not kidding
In 2020, then games writer Jordan Mallory tweeted out a simple sentence that, in the time since, has taken on a life of its own. Mallory said, "I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and i'm not kidding." In the face of AAA games with ballooning budgets and untenable crunch, the sentiment was a simple one: You don't need to work your employees to death and spend millions to make games that will never recoup their costs. In fact, we'd prefer you didn't. We just want good games.
While I'm not sure that this would hold 100-percent true within the context of a mainstream market focused on annual iterations of Call of Duty and Madden, I do believe that the majority of games that come out every year would fit this bill. The Internet, of course, exists in a vacuum, and the video game market is much bigger than what you see on Bluesky or Twitter. Personally, I believe the majority of the massive sales numbers of these annual franchises are by people who have no idea of the online games discourse, and may, in fact, only buy the latest COD and Madden. The bulk of the people who play Call of Duty and Madden have no desire to play The Talos Principle and Hi-Fi Rush, and they probably never will.
And that's okay.
But chasing these types of numbers with every game that is released is doomed for failure, because some of these games are never going to see those numbers. And that's also okay. Not every game is going to land with every gamer, but that doesn't mean those games don't have a market. Which brings us back to Mallory's quote, and why I think it has lasted as long as it has in the gaming culture. It's okay to create smaller games with shorter development times, because they can find a smaller audience with less expectations and still be considered successful.
Which leads me to Shrine's Legacy, an indie RPG I wrapped up last week. I think Shrine's Legacy exemplifies the desire within Mallory's quote. But, I think it actually takes it a bit further and reveals how we might be able build on Mallory's quote to apply it to specific genres and define what many of us might like to see within these genres in the future. Essentially, Shrine's Legacy should serve as a model for indie RPGs going forward.
Shrine's Legacy is a 16-bit RPG that is clearly borrowing from SNES classics like Illusion of Gaia and Secret of Mana to give us a modern take on games many of us, the creators included, grew up playing. And it works for a number of reasons. First, it's a bit of an anomaly in modern RPGs in its simplicity and length. While there is some complexity in the game, which we can get to later, it's a fairly bite-sized RPG. I finished the main story in about 13 hours, and it was the perfect length for the game it was. It didn't fall into the trap of a lot of modern RPGs, filling a world with side-quests and optional missions for the sole purpose of giving the player more to do and a longer game length. Instead, the story it tells is a tight good versus evil plot with a twist or two in the third act. This isn't disparaging in the least. On the contrary, it lent itself to a really great experience, and exactly what I wanted when I started playing. There are side quests and optional missions in the game, but there aren't a ton, and they all evolve out of the main story in a way that makes sense. And, again, all of this was given to me in a package that was shorter than many modern action games that come out of the AAA space.
Additionally, where Shrine's Legacy does set itself apart is in what it adds to the basic JRPG game loop. Borrowing a badge system similar to Hollow Knight, Shrine's Legacy peppers its world with jewels your character can equip to change how they move through and interact with the world. One jewel may increase the distance of your dodge, while another jewel is just a straight damage increase. The customization here is fun to experiment with, but it also shows that the developers actually thought about how they could add something to a genre space they're playing around in. This sets Shrine's Legacy into a unique position of not just replicating the basic elements of the genre, but adding something new to it.
It's not a perfect game, by any means. This is clearly a game made by a small development team that misses the mark on a lot of technical levels. My characters would sometimes disappear behind tiles, as it was clear that the layering was slightly off. I completed one side quest and unlocked what appears to be a game feature that was temporarily removed in the later development of the game because they couldn't get it to work right. I completely missed one set of characters that then showed up at the end of the game making jokes that made no sense to me, because I missed earlier conversations. But even in the midst of all of this, I still had a blast with Shrine's Legacy, because it knew what it wanted to be, and it executed on the fundamentals really well.
And this is why I'm going to adapt Mallory's quote in a genre-specific way to express what I want to see from RPGs going forward, and what I intend to look for when I decide whether or not I want to play a new RPG when its released. Simply put, I want shorter, simpler RPGs that try new genre concepts and I'm not kidding.
I love RPGs. I played a million of them when I was a kid, and they still fill me with joy whenever I play a good one. And I don't want to imply that that same love doesn't cross over to the bigger scale modern RPGs either. Expedition 33 was my game of the year last year, and I sank 50 hours into that one. I've played games like Mass Effect and Baldur's Gate so many times over the years, my total playing time has to be in the hundreds for each game. But not every RPG has to be Expedition 33, Mass Effect, or Baldur's Gate. Maybe it's okay if they're not. After all, going back to the SNES, not every RPG was Final Fantasy VI, and it didn't have to be. Illusion of Gaia, Secret of Mana, Breath of Fire are all games that left their mark on fans of the genre, and are all games that that are simpler in concept and scope. Fuck, Chrono Trigger is considered one of the greatest RPGs of all time, and its half the length of Final Fantasy VI. When did we lose that? When did RPGs become these massive monoliths that weren't worth their cost if they weren't at least 50 hours?
At its core, Shrine's Legacy is probably a C+/B- game at best. There are a lot of technical issues in the game, and its clearly a victim of a small development team with limited resources. But, it managed to do something that few AAA RPGs have managed to do in recent years: I actually enjoyed every hour I spent in the game and when the words "The End" appeared on the screen, I felt incredibly satisfied. I'm not sure I can ask for much more than that. And to be honest, I'm not sure I want more than that. In fact, that just sounds like a pretty great RPG to me.