I could be wrong, but every year the opening event of the Summer Game Fest seems to throw us turn based lovers just scraps. Still, I’m counting on the PC Gaming Show, which by contrast keeps delivering more and more of the kind of niche announcements we actually care about.
That said, there were still two moments that hit very close to home for us. The first is obviously the brand-new trailer for the highly anticipated Strategy RPG Star Wars Zero Company, showing off plenty of new gameplay footage, a small glimpse of the strategic layer, and a well-known character from the saga who’ll be joining the game.
On top of that, the leaks from recent weeks were confirmed: Star Wars: Zero Company is launching on August 27 for PC via Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox. I’ll drop the trailer below, then jump into the second piece of news that concerns us.
The second bit of news is about one of the most anticipated JRPG-inspired titles I’ve been following for a long time, one I even dedicated a full article to covering everything there is to know. I’m talking about Threads of Time, which also showed up during Day of the Devs with brand-new footage.
Threads of Time wears its love of old school RPGs openly, specifically Chrono Trigger. The game uses 2.5D pixel art, turn-based battles, and a time travel mechanic that sends your party across very disparate eras, including prehistoric times to distant futures.
The new footage centered around the needle, your party’s time-traveling vessel, and demonstrated how changes you make in the past can affect events in subsequent periods. An example would include stopping the extinction of dinosaurs and changing the course of history for the dinosaur population by preventing extinction; thus affecting events in the future.
Combat is also similar to older-style JRPGs, with each member of your party able to use time-based abilities/combo-attacks to break down enemy defenses. Unfortunately, no official release date has been announced yet, but it remains one of the most promising indie JRPGs currently in development. Below the trailer.
