Early AccessAttract Mode
Battling prejudices by day and goblins by night in Young Souls
ith a core team of just
two people, it’s fitting
that France-based 1P2P
Studio’s debut title is
a two-player game.
The studio’s name also evokes the ‘1P’ and
‘2P’ names from old coin-op games,
which is also appropriate, given that
Young Souls takes its cue from Sega’s
classic 2D beat-’em-up, Golden Axe.
It might seem like a turn to old-
school fare for 1P2P co-founder
Jérôme Fait, whose career has
included much larger-scale
projects, including a stint at
French MMORPG company,
Ankama. Nonetheless, Fait
points out that YoungSouls is more than just an old-fashioned
brawler, since it also incorporates more
than a few modern elements. With the
word ‘dark’ in the title, you might expect
a Dark Souls influence here, especially
when it comes to harsh but fair combat- though Fait says the game’s influences
also hail from elsewhere. “More recently,
we were inspired by Dragon’s Crown,” he
says. “We liked its structure; we liked
the fact that you mix dungeons
and beat-’em-up gameplay with
RPG mechanics. So we tried
to recreate the same kind of
things, but with a [similar]
modern city setting.”
The game’s split into two
worlds, with its modern-
Fighting Fantasy
W
day town acting as a hub for training,
exploration, and acquiring new gear in the
daytime, before you journey to a medieval
fantasy world to beat the snot out of a
horde of goblins by night. Employing a
day-and-night cycle to distinguish these
two worlds has a certain Persona ring to
it, though the design choice has another
motivation, according to Fait. “The day
cycle was created for the feeling that
becoming a hero takes time,” he says. “You
know, you’re not just becoming a hero in
only one day. This is kind of an origin story
of how you begin as marginals and then
become heroes.”
That gradual process of becoming a
hero is naturally tied to the concept of
any RPG where levelling up and acquiringEarly AccessAttract Mode
6 / wfmag.cc