Dreamblazers is a lighthearted, turn-based 2D RPG about adventuring your way!

Inspired by the self-expression of teambuilding in the Pokémon series and the free exploration in parts of games like Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, and Tales of Vesperia, players largely choose their own pace and approach to battling, traveling, and interacting with characters across the world of Peremene.

In other words, they’ll trailblaze their preferred playstyle—the players, just like the protagonists, can be Dreamblazers.

Dreamblazers is being created in the famous multi-platform game development engine Unity and some of its features include:

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Meaningful Battles and Teambuilding Decisions

Finely-balanced abilities and highly diverse opponents keep battles strategic.

You’ll be able to build your preferred battle parties: keep the characters you like and kick out the ones you don’t! Yes, even the mainest of main characters can get the boot if you don’t want them. Playable characters’ abilities are in the same boat: like the streamlined experience of other well-known RPGs such as the Tales series, you can take your favorite abilities into battle and leave the rest sitting in menus.

As for the enemies you’ll be battling against, complex enemy skillsets mean that hardly a monster around has fewer than three tricks up its sleeve, from stat boosts to two-turn charge-up attacks—even lowly slimes ignore 95% of the damage from physical attacks! There’s none of that mindless throw-out-your-strongest-moves-every-turn business here from either protagonist or antagonist, but it’s not esoteric or obtuse either; the damage formulas and balance were modeled after Pokémon to be easy to learn and difficult to master.

Speaking of Pokémon, many monsters inhabit several continents, but don’t worry about repetition. Dreamblazers has an excellent range of enemy groups in each area, making each battle stand out. Even if you go through ten encounters without seeing the same lineup of monsters, that’s almost always not the full scope of possibilities!

Bottom line: whether you like flinging fireballs or slinging status effect shenanigans, the types of battles you experience are largely up to you, the characters you include, and the abilities you bring into battle.

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Non-Linear Exploration Across Beautiful Continents

Run where the wind leads you! The protagonists’ journey across different continents occurs in a linear order, but each continent is a self-contained world of its own and every corner is waiting for you to poke around it in exactly the way you see fit. Your pace, your timing, and your order.

Additionally, a major theme of Dreamblazers is finding more beauty in the world than you could have imagined if you hadn’t seen it for yourself. I’ve brought pixel artist Becca Bair to the team to bring life to memorable 2D environments I’ve envisioned, inspired by some of the most fascinating locations on our own planet.

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Fashionably Fun Equipment System

A hero’s clothes never go out of style. …literally! Even a character’s default clothes are powerful and useable until the end of the game—but you’ll probably want to make use of your ten outfit slots to optimize your wardrobe. In this hybrid of an equipment system, skill system, and fashion system, clothes are just as likely to boost five stats as they are to boost one!

Even a tossed-together outfit will give the listed equipment boosts, but going heavy on certain styles of clothing will uncover hundreds of outfit themes like Sassy and Classy, Romanticized Rogue, Angel in Blue Jeans, and many others to power up your characters further.

Pay attention to each character’s personality too; in a harmony of gameplay and story, that girly girl in your battle party can get stat bonuses from sports tops and combat boots but will have an easier time getting them from dresses and sandals!

Just beware the fashion faux pas!

Jig Starlight: "I've gotta experiment! For fashion! For science!" …but she never tried nail polish as blush again. pic.twitter.com/yEUNCQLk0F

— Jelly Paladin (@JellyPaladin) March 4, 2015

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“Shades of Rainbow Grey” Storytelling

In this colorful and eccentric world with talking cats and a global superhero squad (to say nothing of the real crazy stuff), groups of people inevitably battle over the different futures they want to build—the dreams they want to blaze—but no side is “the bad guys.”

What do you believe? Whose values do you agree with and whose do you dispute? You’ll have to make these decisions for yourself. Although Dreamblazers‘ story has a philosophical core, it’s presented in an approachable and accessible way and pushes the sympathy for nearly all motivations and ideals with flawed but lovable characters. No one-dimensional characters here; you’ll meet “heroes” who are more selfish than pure-hearted and “villains” are more naive than sinister.

One might call this shades of grey, but it’s a pretty optimistic grey!

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Bottom-Up, Gameplay-Oriented Design

Almost everything in Dreamblazers began with a focus on gameplay mechanics. I didn’t create character personalities and assign them stats accordingly; I created stats and assigned them personalities. I didn’t create a world and populate it with monsters; I created monsters and built a world to suit them.

My requirements for an intricate and compelling gameplay experience are the top reason that the flexibility and depth of ORK Framework and Unity were an absolute necessity. Though I’ve written a lovingly-crafted story, this isn’t your typical story-centric RPG. This is Dreamblazers: less drama, more adventure!

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Let’s conclude with a character lineup!

Designed and drawn by Flora from floradrawz.com, here are dialogue portraits and minor details about just some of the characters you’ll guide, meet, team up with, or battle against!