Full Circle is one of those indie RPGs that instantly feels familiar – a little Zelda, a bit of SNES and a touch of Sega – and that’s because solo developer Adolfo Juan Fernando Gazzo Castañeda, better known as 2ndPlayerGames, grew up on classics such as Breath of Fire III, and that influence is impossible to miss, but the goal has always been to imagine what those games would look and feel like if they were made today, not recreate them pixel for pixel.
The result is a vibrant mix of pixel art, low-poly 3D environments, dramatic lighting and expressive animation that gives Full Circle its own identity, while sidestepping the grey, washed-out look so many post-apocalyptic games fall back on. It's also an astonishing amount of work for one person, and a reminder that some of the best indie game devs are still creating ambitious projects largely on their own, armed with the best game development software, plenty of determination and, quite possibly, the best laptop for game development they can afford.
Gazzo Castañeda is handling everything from art and design to programming and music, and that all-in approach comes through in the game's world, where environments, characters and even level layouts are shaped as much by melodies as sketches. I caught up with the developer to talk about finding a visual style beyond nostalgia, the realities of making an ambitious JRPG alone, and why this new wave of indie RPGs is introducing as many new fans to the genre as it is welcoming old ones back.
Read more about Full Circle on the developer's website.
CB: CB: Which classic JRPGs had the biggest influence on Full Circle's visual style, and were there any you deliberately avoided referencing?
Adolfo Juan Fernando Gazzo Castañeda:
I started working on the game with a vision in mind. How would Breath of Fire III look nowadays from a visual point of view? That's my biggest influence in that regard. Besides that, I'm actually trying to create my own style; there are sometimes references, but in general I'm not trying to copy something or avoid something. I want it to look stunning and, given the setting, not the typical bleak and grey dystopian postapocalyptic world. I should add that I'm partially colourblind, which, according to my publisher, might be a reason for the colour palette I'm using. For me, it just looks "right" [haha].
CB: Are you trying to recreate how classic JRPGs actually looked, or how players remember them looking?
AJFGC: Definitely going for how people remember things. Not how they actually looked. See, I grew up on JRPGs, and I have quite some memories, but I do also know that these memories aren't facts. But as I said, the idea was to create something which looks like BoF III would or could look like nowadays, also using a more dynamic camera and perspective, as BoF was mostly isometric.
CB: How did you develop the contrasting visual identities of the floating cities and the monster-filled surface world?
AJFGC: Without spoiling too much, there are various different visual identities to the cities and the surface, and what I was trying to convey through visual language is the different ways they handle themselves. The cities are, from what we know, the last stand of humanity, and they were built with tech from the past.
The rest of the world aged. And the people living in the cities were trying, for quite some time, to keep the cities afloat. So they were kept as intact as possible, more or less, while the surface fell apart. Ruins everywhere, displaying what once was. And plants reclaiming what used to belong to them.
CB: What were the biggest challenges in giving each character a distinct personality and silhouette through pixel art?
AJFGC: Honestly? To not make it sound and feel off or cringe. Full Circle is definitely inspired by coming-of-age narratives. And getting the tone right and making the characters believable within the setting and within "their" world is quite a challenge. Making them look different is rather easy in the end. But there are, for example, related characters and getting them right was more complicated. Also, oh god, one of my biggest mistakes was to create asymmetrical characters [haha]; animating them takes ages.
Pixel art is both a blessing and a challenge in my opinion. You can communicate lots of information without actually drawing all the details, but deciding what the minimum you can show to communicate what you want is the challenge. As I wanted the world to feel plausible and "realistic" to some degree, the designs themselves are not as over the top as one would expect on a typical JRPG; that made it harder to make them visually unique between them.
So I try to give them different enough palettes, hairstyles and clothing so that they can be read as different in 64 x 64 pixelart sprites. The good thing is that the main characters have their own portraits too, and there we can show more detail in the way they look. I also added lots of small extra animations that help make their personalities come across more easily.
CB: How do you balance nostalgic pixel art with modern lighting, effects and presentation?
AJFGC: [Ha-ha] I'm honestly not trying to be super nostalgic. I want to create something new. I want it to feel like you know it somehow, but I'm trying to create something modern in terms of visuals. I just love pixel art in general, so that's as old-school as it gets, I guess. Okay, well, also the low-poly objects, but that's mostly because it fits the pixel art better, as you can use textures with the same pixel density. Lighting? Effects? They should look as cool and fancy as possible.
CB: What does the term ‘2.5HD’ mean to your team, and how does it shape the game's art direction?
AJFGC: To me. After all, I'm a solo developer [haha]. Well, for now. I might get some freelancers at some point to save some time, but for now I'm doing everything on my own. And I'm not sure about the 2.5HD term. I know it gets used a lot, but honestly I don't care so much. I love 2D games; I love 3D games. I love 3D games with sprites. It all comes down to the style, if it fits and if there is consistency. I am just liking the look I'm trying to create.
CB: Can you walk us through your art pipeline, or at least the kinds of questions you ask and choices you make, from concept sketch to final in-game environment?
AJFGC: It varies depending on what I'm working on. But it all starts with defining the setting in which the asset will live. Is it a town? Is it snowing? Is it dangerous? Those sorts of questions limit the options of what could possibly work in that situation. Then, if we are talking about 3d assets, let's say a tree. I ask another set of questions: how old is the tree? Is there enough sun? Will it therefore grow at an angle? What kind of trees would survive in the given setting?
Then, after having my answers, I start looking up references; everything counts. From the internet, art books, going out to take pictures of trees while I walk my dogs and so on. Then comes actually the easier part, which is creating the asset. I do a quick sketch, be it on paper or in Photoshop, and then right into Blender. As I work with low-poly assets, modelling is very quick.
However, texturing is where most of the time goes in. As I mentioned earlier, to make the pixel art sprites work right on a 3d level, I create the textures for all 3d assets, making sure that they share the same pixel density; if it's a box, it's super easy.
But if it's a more organic shape, like the tree we were talking about, then I usually end up drawing directly on the model in Blender, after having prepared the UV maps to be as close as possible to the expected pixel density, the less stretching the better. Later I go into Photoshop and polish the texture, adding dirt and shading.
CB: And what about pixel art?
AJFGC: For sprites and pixel art in general, it's more like putting up an interesting podcast and drawing away till the wrist hurts [hahahah].
However, when it comes to music and level design, that is where I think my pipeline diverges a little bit from the regular. I'm a musician or composer, whatever you like to call it, at heart. So when creating scenes, levels or structures, I always look at them from an audio perspective. Not quite sure how to describe it, but I sing or whistle the melodies I have in mind for a scene and imagine it playing out in my mind, or at least some specific scene, and then create it based on that.
Sometimes I compose a track first and then build the scene for it or use placeholder music with the feeling I want to convey. Sometimes I block out things; sometimes I just create the final assets. I am trying to define a more streamlined approach to make production easier to predict. But I still end up jumping around disciplines when doing the levels.
CB: Which location, character or piece of concept art best captures the visual identity of Full Circle?
AJFGC: I don't think there is a single piece of art. It's the greater picture. The world map itself defines the visual identity. The wilderness defines the identity, and so do the hubs below a city. The visuals for the chain combos… they all have their specific meaning to me, but only together do they form the identity.
CB: As a solo developer, how do you decide where to focus artistic detail and where to simplify? Who’s your sounding board to prevent bad decisions or wasted time?
AJFGC: That's a good one! I became rather blind to the project by now. I have ideas I implement, but I'm never really sure if they make sense or if certain mechanics work the way I've intended them to work; it's very easy to go down the rabbit hole.
Luckily, the folks from my publisher are always there for me to iterate and to throw ideas forth and back. Most of the time it turns out that they would have had the same solutions to certain problems; in other cases, the extensive calls lead to situations where I adjust some UI elements or remove a blinking element for readability. I sometimes ask my wife too for a more "not gamer" but "communicator" angle.
Phew. Then again… we've all been working on this for so long now, [haha]. So we're looking forward to Gamescom. Finally, some people will try out the stuff, and I get some feedback from the outside.
CB: Why do you think players are reconnecting with the visual style and world-building of classic JRPGs right now?
AJFGC: I think it's a cycle. A lot of developers who grew up with those games are now in their mid 30s to early 40s and are finally making the games they always wanted to make. And these new titles are reaching not only people from that same generation who are looking for those childhood memories, but also younger players who are discovering the genre for the first time.
Through these new indie JRPGs, they're developing a taste for the classics they maybe never even heard of before. So the style is reconnecting with old fans and creating new ones at the same time.
