Indie RPG Shiness Has Ambitions Beyond Being Just A Game

Shiness  is an RPG on Kickstarter with a battle system that draws inspiration from Naruto and Dragon Ball. And the manga inspirations don’t stop there. Developer Ynnis Interactive have already planned a transmedia strategy that includes a manga storyline to flesh out the game’s world. Accordingly, reading the manga and figuring out the scattered clues leads to hidden quests in the game itself.

In Shiness’ battle system, players will engage with foes they’ll see while wandering the map and enter into a one-on-one fight to the death. Once in combat, you’ll have to mix and match kicks, punches, spells and other abilities into a combo system to defeat foes. There’s even “Hyper Mode,” special super moves unique to each character.

Allies you bring along—there will be a full party of five to choose from—will stand outside and offer pre-determined support such as spells, as will foes. But most of it will be focused on the action-centric fighting. The main man is Chado, an anthropomorphic furry chipmunky-like man from the Waki race.

While he’s the straight up fighter, able to throw a stoneball at foes, each of the other characters also brings something to the table. Rosalya the human, for instance, is a mage who’ll be able to open up paths, detect traps and reveal invisible or hidden enemies and animals.

Yeah, yawn. Unique characters with a special skill. So what, right? It appears the special skills of each character will help out when you’re questing in the world of Mahera. Sure, the quest giver wants you to go get an item from the cave. But how do you do it?

Shiness is suggesting that options include sneaking in and nipping off with it, negotiating with the leader, or just straight up bashing everything’s brains out. Some of this will doubtless be dependent on which characters you pick to bring along. Different choices will lead to reputational changes, different paths and responses from non-playable characters. Shiness even suggests that being diplomatic might be the way to go, with cities expanding and more shops open for trade.

Shiness has about just under two weeks left to go to hit funding for its PC and Mac version, with early stretch goals including porting to the PlayStation 4. You can back it here.