Short StoriEs

How indie ‘MICRO-RPGs’ offer fascinating perspectives on the genre’s overstuffed epics.

- Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

In what crumbling, dragon-leather tome was it written that role-playing games have to be so incredibly long? It’s certainly not a convention that rings true for Sraëka Lillian, whose RPG Maker-based ‘OI’ games clock in at a few hours apiece. Each is a focused exploration of one of “a thousand little questions” an RPG developer must answer – Atom OI, for example, is an interrogation of the nuances of status effects. “My points of obsession are these fundamentals of RPG design, right?” Sraëka explains. “And I don’t need to make a big game to explore those.”

Once you’re done with the OI games you could move on to jetstorm4’s Fallen Star, or John Thyer’s Facets – two wordier yet equally brisk productions that are pitched as the climax of longer, untold fantasy stories. “Like, you get that there’s a 20-hour version of this,” says Thyer, “but we’re cutting straight to the part you care the most about.” Or if you want something a touch more esoteric – Hylics, Mason Lindroth’s visually overpowering but concise claymation escapade. Or for a splash of romance, Get In The Car, Loser, the hectic lesbian road trip RPG from Ladykiller In A Bind developer Christine Love, which tells much of its story in the backseat of a speeding pink convertible. Or for something at once comedic and darker, Slimes from sitydreamer, in which you play an asshole adventurer eradicating a single dungeon’s worth of Dragon Quest’s least-threatening critters.