Destiny Chronicles launched just last week on Kickstarter, hoping to raise funds in order to see the game through to completion. For those who haven’t heard of it, it is a 3D action RPG that is inspired by great JRPG’s like Ys VIII. The game is currently sitting at just over a third of its goal with 24 days left to fund at the time of publishing this.

Destiny Chronicles is set to release on PC through Steam, PS4, and Nintendo Switch. With its Kickstarter now live, VGR had the chance to interview the Taiwan-based indie developer to get some more information regarding Celeste and her journey to prove herself worthy of becoming a knight by taking down a thief alongside her two companions.

With such a heavy emphasis on Celeste’s two companions, Ruby and Valana, we wanted to know how they will affect both the story and gameplay in Destiny Chronicles. Note that it does contain some very light story spoilers for the beginning of the game and how you meet Ruby and Valana. Here’s what the developer had to say:

“After the theft of the artifact that kicks off the game’s plot, Celeste decides to hunt down the thief to get it back. Unfortunately, she runs into trouble early in her quest and Valana helps her out. Valana is a mercenary searching for the same thief, so they team up.

Ruby is a mage and researcher, but she’s currently devoted her efforts toward proving the existence of a shadowy organization. She has reason to believe the thief is part of that organization, so she joins Celeste and Valana in the hopes of getting answers.

They’re the first companions Celeste has had outside of the Ashen Order, so they’ll influence her view on the outside world while helping her with her mission. We also plan to implement optional conversations between them for further character development and fun scenes.

As for how they affect the gameplay, your party members are specialized in ranged combat.

Ruby is a mage and can perform hybrid functions, be it dealing heavy damage or using combat support actions (for example, healing, buffing your party members, and placing debuffs on enemies). You’ll be able to choose whether to specialize in one style or keep a mixture of both, via the talent tree mechanics that will improve her abilities.

Valana is an archer and specializes in dealing damage. She’ll be able to help you deal damage from a ranged, while the player fights at the front lines as Celeste.”

While on the subject of your party members, some action JRPG’s similar to Destiny Chronicles have allowed players to switch between the party members at will and use them in combat. Given how different Celeste, Ruby, and Valana are in terms of weapons, it would certainly allow for varied gameplay. Thankfully, this could happen but it all comes to down to the Kickstarter results:

“Switching between party members will be a stretch goal for the Kickstarter. It would be great to let players play the game as a different character in a different perspective. If we reach that goal, there will also be talent tree enhancements so that the other playable characters will have fully fleshed out combat.”

The Kickstarter notably mentions that it is inspired by “classic” action JRPG’s. We inquired about which ones in particular and how those games have directly affected the developer’s work on Destiny Chronicles.

“For the gameplay, we took inspirations from JRPGs like Ys VIII and similar games with hack-and-slash style combat. The combat mechanics in Ys VIII were handled very well, so we’ve taken notes from that game to design the gameplay mechanics in Destiny Chronicles.

I mentioned earlier that there will be optional conversations between the characters. This was mainly inspired by the Tales series because we love how the skits add fun conversations and increase the depth of the characters. As for the story, we’ve drawn inspiration from many of our favorite JRPGs and are aiming to blend a compelling story with a lighthearted tone.”

On the subject of why the developer has chosen to go the route of Kickstarter for funding Destiny Chronicles, this is the developer’s response:

“We’re an indie developer and are unable to self-fund the game’s development by ourselves as it is very expensive.

Since it’s a 3D game, there are a lot of elements that can get expensive quickly, and so we need Kickstarter to deliver our vision of the game.”

Finally, the big question that was on our minds was just when can we play Destiny Chronicles. The Kickstarter page notes an expected December 2019 release window for the delivery of the game. However, that could just be a placeholder. The developer gave us an estimate on just how far along the action RPG is in development and what’s left to finish.

“I’ll say we’re about somewhere around 10% in development. Much of our progress has been building the foundations needed for the game, such as the combat mechanics and dialogue system. We also have planned out how we want the story to start and end.

Much of the bulk of the remaining development progress will be creating content such as environment assets, character models, 2D art, animations, and VFX.”

Destiny Chronicles will release on PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Make sure to give its Kickstarter a look if you’re interested before it concludes in less than a month.