Are you ready to challenge your beliefs?
Triangle Strategy is a tactical role-playing game that contains a comprehensive story of choice, conflict, and some betrayal. If you're not familiar with tactical role-playing games, that's okay too. Remember, it's all about strategy and utilization!
We sat down with the game's two producers, Mr. Tomoya Asano and Mr. Yukihiro Arai, to learn about the game's development process and even get some personal advice from them!
How did the name Triangle Strategy come about?
Tomoya Asano: It actually comes from the Octopath Traveler with us. Octo, meaning eight, describes eight characters that you can follow along eight paths. Therefore, for triangular strategy, there are three angles in the game (utility, morality, and freedom). I'm sure a lot of American viewers have commented that it's a strange name, but one of the big things we consider when naming a game is that when users see the game name, they can understand the game they're going to play.
When we look at the meaning of the three perspectives, they represent three countries and three other major players. Each of these characters has their own values and goals that influence the story.
Where does the plot come from?
Yukihiro Arai: When we started this project, our concept was to create a story for adult gamers. We chose tactical types and conflict situations to achieve this. We try to make such a complex subject as easy to understand as possible. When we think about conflict, there are at least two groups fighting. Why are they fighting? What do they want? This is the starting point for us to think about this story.
Triangle Strategy differs from many tactical games in that it can traverse multiple layers of maps. Why do you think it's important to add this mechanism?
Yukihiro Arai: Through these levels or layering aspects, we can make changes to the characters in the game. We don't want the strongest character to be a swordsman, tank, or magic merchant, so level is the best choice. We want every character to have a purpose. This means that characters with ladders can support archers by bringing them higher to the ground to cover more areas. An interesting aspect is that all the roles are interconnected and can work together, so you can create your own team and strategy in each case. We want players to enjoy this.
What's your favorite elemental attack?
Yukihiro Arai: I personally use a lot of electricity. It has a paralyzing effect and is very useful on the battlefield. At the end of the development, I also realized that the wind element became very useful. At first, it was difficult to distinguish between the effects of fire, ice, lightning, and wind.
Looking at each character, what abilities do you think would be most useful for playing through the game?
Yukihiro Arai: One of my favorite things, which you can see in the demo, is being able to create ice walls. One of the interesting things about the tactical RPG genre is to consider where to place the characters at the beginning of the battle. There are different heights (or levels) and you can use abilities like ice walls to stop enemies. I think it's unique and I definitely recommend you to give it a try!
Tomoya Asano: In this game, it is very important to place characters. So, I personally recommend using knockback to push enemies. There are a lot of abilities that can propel other characters. Then, there are other characters that can place traps. As Arai said, each map has a lot of heights. So, repel the enemy from high... It feels so good! And this can do a lot of damage to the enemy.
Where do beliefs come from and how do they play a role in games?
Yukihiro Arai: When we first started this project, we had eight beliefs as key components of the game. Eight is really a lot. It is difficult to distinguish between eight beliefs. Therefore, we cut them down to make the game system easier to understand. We have chosen three (utility, morality, and freedom) to deal with the ideas of justice and rights. We want people to think, "What is justice?" What are rights? ”