The world is in peril and there’s only one hope left. A stick man. The Last Hero of Nostalgaia is a very different take on the super serious Souls titles currently cleaving their way through the charts. While tanked up heroes with rippling biceps clutch epic weapons and fell demi gods, Nostalgaia is about to get a champion that’s all together more stripped down. With the recent release of a first look earlier today, we spoke to Jon Warner from developer Over The Moon and found out a little more about how this self-defacing old school ode is worth passing up the glory of an Elden Ring for.
Gamespace: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us about The Last Hero of Nostalgaia. Can you introduce yourself and Over The Moon?
Over The Moon:
Of course, yeah, my name is John Warner. I’m the director of Over The Moon. We’re an indie studio and developed The Fall and The Fall Part 2. I think that in terms of our studio identity, we are really interested in story and how we can merge a good story and can be meaningful.
Gamespace: Having watched the trailer, Nostalgaia seems to be a very different mix of old and new. What inspired this this concept?
Over The Moon:
A lot of things inspired it honestly. Probably chief inspiration for it was Dark Souls itself. Dark Souls has got this really beautiful, interesting aesthetic and series of ideas around the past. In Dark Souls, you explore this weird, faded, dying world and you find these little fragments of history that don’t make sense. You get the sense that maybe there is something that existed in this world or used to exist. Maybe there’s something that I’m supposed to be doing, but it’s not clear what that is, but maybe you could uncover it. I thought that idea was so interesting. People are always dealing with the past and obligations from a long time ago and asking questions like who am I really and why am I here and what am I? All of that is just so interesting to me, partly because our industry, in my opinion, is in this really big nostalgic phase.
Gamespace: Does that play into the themes of the game as a whole?
Over The Moon:
Over the moon really likes big ideas. We I get excited by them. I love talking about them with people and we try our best to make games that have real substance to them, something to think about in a way that’s as fun, engaging, and not overtly obtuse.
Gamespace: Watching the trailer, it seems like Nostalgaia doesn’t take itself too seriously. How do you think that will be received when so much of Souls games are about getting gud.
Over The Moon:
We’ll see how we’ll see how they take it in. In all honesty, having the character be profoundly humble was also inspired by Dark Souls. In particular Dark Souls 3,. In Dark Souls 3 you start out on a journey because the champions of the world that that that basically drove civilization forward have abandoned their duty, and the entire edifice of civilization has become basically corrupt and failed to keep civilization alive.
So you ask, on whose shoulders does that responsibility fall? The answer that Dark Souls has is that it falls on the absolute lowest. That’s you Dark Souls. You don’t have any quality inside yourself to do anything you here, and need to go out hunting for it. That’s another idea is so lovely and beautiful and that is is part of the reason why we have this stick figure. Even though it looks funny, there’s a seriousness of darkness in that, and we explore it in a way that’s meaningful. But it’s also ridiculous.
Gamespace: Is the player avatar a statement to this effect?
Over The Moon:
I think I think to a large extent. Yes. I’m going to try and be careful to steer a little bit away from the story, but certainly humility is a big is a big part of it. I think that players will get the opportunity to feel accomplished. Your character still goes and does big things. That’s the heart of the game.
I hope people will want to take on this role. It’s related to another kind of funny thing because like and hopefully this resonates with the Dark Souls audience, which is as a player. I’m so tired of being patted on the back and congratulated for every meagre success.
Gamespace: Is that where the Narrator came from?
Over The Moon:
When we first started working on the last year and also guy I I I actually, uh, there’s a long time ago I created the narrator character and I had him absolutely just verbally abusing the player like just absolute epithets and brutal things I can think of, and I thought it was really funny. After showing it to a people, however, I realized it was difficult to land for some and we pulled it back.
Gamespace: It sounds like a very dark British streak. I wonder if that will play differently in other regions of the world?
Over The Moon:
Interesting, it’s possible. Yeah, the British have always had a dark streak in their humour. It’s or that’s how it’s always occurred to me.
Gamespace: As you dive into the story of Nostalgaia, how does the player character evolve?
Over The Moon:
Mechanically, the primary inspiration is the Dark Souls core systems were keeping to a fairly traditional RPG progression, so we get the overall formula right. That being said, we’re certainly innovating in in lots of different ways. Uhm, there’s a few Metroidvania type mechanics that play with depth and fidelity, and all that kind of stuff. And we’ve done. I think, a pretty darn good job at integrating our different narrative mechanics.
Also, out in the world, there’s a lot of these different sort of fragments. These objects that you find in our game, of course because everything is collapsing into the past and being forgotten. These objects have got these faded memories. They maybe once had an identity because they’re all conscious. Everything is alive and you can cause it to become more remembered and not only will that you know give you an art upgrade, but you could also get a shiny new high-fidelity AAA weapon that might include damage increases and special abilities.
It’s out in the wider world where you’ll find armor, weapons, and all kinds of stuff. It’s all totally optional, l because I also acknowledge that there’s a certain number of players who do not care about lore or worldbuilding or story at all, and they just want some fun, engaging combat. To answer the question simply, we’re starting in a traditional sense to make sure that the game is really crisp and clean and plays well.
Gamespace: How big is that wider world full of lore snippets? There’s bound to be Elden Ring comparisons.
Over the Moon:
I mean pretty big. It’s not really an answer. It is a big, open, interconnected world. If players that are fans of the Souls series think about the level design of Dark Souls. That’s something that we’ve sort of tried to recapture. The first Dark Souls is open world but it’s not open world in in the you know, in like The Elder Scrolls. More interestingly, the world is very dense and interconnected. There’s pathways that link everything. This is something that we thought was amazing, so we’ve tried to explore that more.
Gamespace: For anybody making their way through the world, can they expect a range of different challenges or wall to wall boss fights?
Over The Moon:
So, one of the criticisms that I’ve noticed from other smaller Souls likes is that a lot of the encounters can be a little bit samey. We’ve really spent a lot of time developing a range of very weird enemies. In the overworld there’s a lot of different challenges. More importantly than that, we’ve tried to theme our areas on different types of challenges. When you come into a new zone, it should feel relatively fresh. There’ll be a new mechanic to play with, new challenges, and enemies will attack you in interesting ways. There’s a lot of variation in that regard, and I think that we’ve done a pretty good job at controlling the difficulty. There’s a lot of enemies that are simple and fun, and reasonably you could overcome them. There is also a handful that are extraordinarily difficult, and you won’t expect them when they appear, so it’ll be like a fun surprise.
Of course, there are the big bads which pose a significant challenge. These are highly structured and highly polished , and should be fun to anybody who likes a good Dark Souls boss.
Gamespace: How does audio design fit into Nostalgaia? The retro visuals leave it open to some cool ideas
Over The Moon:
We’re having a lot of fun with this. Generally, we’ve we’re fairly sparse on music because the world is desolate, so we need it to feel somewhat vacuous. That being said, we’ve got A Shell In The Pit working with us who’ve worked on a whole number of interesting games, like Rogue legacy. They’re doing an absolutely fantastic job making music and we’re playing with exactly that mix of modern analog instruments and digital chiptune. Tracks that might sound like modern soundtracks will break and degenerate down into this retro pixel element. Those different elements will merge with each other and dance together. I’m loving the soundtrack honestly.
Gamespace: As we wrap up and look forward to release. What are your hopes for the game?
Over The Moon:
I have a number of them. I I don’t get my hopes up too much, but I hope that it has a positive reaction from a wide variety of players. I hope that that a lot of players can have a really fun, simple, and visceral experience. Hopefully they will get a few laughs and be satisfied that Nostalgaia is a really interesting action game in a weird world with a lot of interesting challenges. On a simple level, that’s a huge success that I’d be absolutely thrilled with.
Then, there’s the artist in me that hopes people will connect with the with the sort of narrative and the lore aspects. For me when I talked about Dark Souls earlier, there’s a way in which those ideas of extracting value from the past. It’s in there, but it’s subtle. It’s like a voice that’s muffled through a brick wall. It’s not like conscious. It hasn’t been fully articulated and Nostalgaia is like a 3-dimensional exploration of that consciously, so you can play the game and find it to be both spontaneously meaningful and dumb fun. I don’t know if people will have that experience. I got my fingers crossed.
Here at Gamespace, we’re sharpening our sticks and preparing for this new take on Souls like games. If you remember the days of classic MUDs and the first Metroid titles, then you’re likely to enjoy this forward facing throwback. Check out more on The Last hero of Nostalgaia over on the official Steam Store page before it arrives later this year.