Indivisible

A Metroidvania RPG shows Lab Zero branching out from its fighting game roots

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We expect certain things from Lab Zero Games. The studio behind Skullgirls knows how to unpack a virtual punch. It’s also very good at designing memorable characters (we still can’t unsee demon nun Double unpeeling herself into a pulsating mass). It’s fiercely detail-oriented, each fighter in Skullgirls’ small roster a technical labour of love. Sprawling Metroidvania RPG Indivisible, then, is something we weren’t expecting from this studio: when you’re used to focusing on individual frames on single screens, creating an entire world must be quite a culture shock.

“I’m starting to realise why RPGs have so many bugs,” says Mike Zaimont, lead design director and programmer. “In a fighting game, you spend months looking at the same character: you implement a thing, you try all the edge cases you can think of, you find bugs. You’re staring at the same part of the game for a long time, so you find a lot more of the problems. But in an RPG, or something with a giant world, you test every edge case you can think of in 15 minutes, and then have to move on. It’s a lot of work – I slept some time last year – but it’s something we want to be doing.”