Throne of Orugallu genre

I've shared only a brief description of the game so far. You might wonder, "so what kind of game is this exactly?"

Image by Marko Deichmann from Pixabay

I began this project writing a visual novel, similar to an earlier game I created with a friend, Morgan's Trail. Visual novels (VNs) typically focus on a strong narrative with a handful of choices and branching paths. They use fixed characters, and excel at storytelling with images and writing.

Morgan's Trail visual novel

However, I've been influenced by an excellent game I recently played called Roadwarden. This is a type of role playing game (RPG) where you get to name your character, choose a class, explore a world on your own terms and make many decisions. These shape your character and the world you live in - sometimes in unexpected ways.

Roadwarden - Assemble Entertainment

Throne of Orugallu lets you shape your character too, through choices and a couple of attributes. There is no 'right' way to play it. I want to give people the experience of choosing a play style, then seeing how that works with the kingdom and whether it brings the outcome they expect. So in that sense it is also an RPG. However, it leans into the images and writing used by VNs to deliver a story.

So I'm calling it a VN-RPG hybrid :)