Spotlight: Mineralis
The 50th game by Studio Esagames, Mineralis is a grand undertaking and my first truly professional endeavor.
It is a JRPG inspired by the classics, improving on every shortcoming of the JRPG genre that I could think of. The NPCs are interesting and have plenty of things to say,
combat has variety and deep tactics, the party has plenty of opportunities for campfire discussions and intellectual conflict, MP is limited yet doesn't need to be
conserved, the game has no random encounters or puzzle bosses, etc.
Mineralis is also designed to naturally teach players about various concepts related to effective altruism, as they interact with the multicultural game world and make
decisions that affect various NPCs. However, the game didn't reach its goals in this regard; I wrote a
detailed prediction
and an honest postmortem about the
topic.
Esagame #59: FireRogue
FireRogue is a roguelite draft-simulator fangame based on Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword. You draft a five-unit roster and need to win twenty battles, each with their own
tactical quirks. Despite that, the focus is on campaign strategy instead of combat, leading the game to adopt the Link Arena battle format.
After each battle, you need to make a tricky decision between improving your weaponry, handing out stat boosters, or teaching new skills to your units. The fast-paced
gameplay and strategic depth make it an interesting challenge for even the most experienced Fire Emblem tacticians. Lose a single fight and the run is over.
Can you overcome the toughest arenas in Elibe?
Esagame #57:
Exponential Emergence
Exponential Emergence is a time-loop incremental about evolving new organisms, while under various objectives and a tight time limit. Each layer of emergence feeds into
the next, compounding into fast exponential growth.
It was made for the GMTK Game Jam 2025, and finished in the top 6%. The game picked up a lot of praise, along with requests for a fuller version on Steam. It even went
viral on the trending charts, appearing on itch.io frontpage and briefly peaking at #1 in the incremental genre.
Alas, I feel like I have explored most of the design space here, and don't think the formula would hold up very well for a longer experience. Still happy with how it
turned out though: mixing loss conditions into an incremental led to very interesting challenges!
Exponential Emergence is a short game, free to play in your browser.
Esagame #56: The Final Decade
The Final Decade is a challenging resource management strategy game about making interesting and meaningful input-random decisions. It addresses a bone I have with
mobile strategy games: they tend to be consistently clearable with simple heuristics.
This game on the other hand is designed to hone into the core of what makes strategic decisions interesting: they should impact gameplay without being obvious, be
asymmetric to prevent heuristics, input-random to prevent memorization, simple enough to understand at a glance, yet layered enough to make first-order optimization
obviously bad.
The Final Decade is a work in progress, but already somewhat playable on web and mobile. You can try the latest alpha at:
https://studioesagames.com/tfd/
Esagame #50: Mineralis
Make an impact in the living, breathing world of Mineralis. Think, talk and fight your way through challenging combat and moral dilemmas. Mineralis is a
hyper-meaningful JRPG with 30 years of life advice condensed into 3 hours of gameplay.
Cherry-picked quotes from players:
"I'm used to hitting A until something interesting happens, but the dialogue here was actually good. It is unlike any other game experience I've had. Most games lack
something this has, and no others have it all."
"Captures that feeling of playing a really good 16-bit RPG. The soundtrack just kept getting better and better with each passing encounter."
"This game is definitely worth 10 bucks. The dialogue is very meaningful, much more meaningful than in many JRPGs I have played in my life, because it has philosophical
elements that question life and decision-making, things like that."
"The characters are too otaku."
Interested in collaboration?
Although I primarily make freeware, I'm on the lookout for exceptional collaborators and talent. Let me know if you're interested in working together!
