Indie RPG team Lovely Hellplace is undeniably retro-focused: 2024's Dread Delusion and the early access Entropy are crunchy and polygonal as hell. But that also extends to design. Dread Delusion was like a stripped-down Morrowind, while Entropy is a classico JRPG with some PC gaming DNA spliced in.
When I spoke to lead developer James Wragg earlier this year, he told me that he thinks part of the appeal of older games is their willingness to be succinct.
"What I love about this era is that things are a lot more streamlined and a lot simpler, but in a really intentional way.
"I think we're starting to get into the era of open world fatigue. I think a lot of people are getting quite bored and fatigued of these kinds of 60-plus hour AAA open-world games that are very systems-heavy, but also as a result of that, feature a lot of repetition of these kinds of systems.
"You often find you're doing the same thing dozens—if not hundreds—of times before the credits roll. Whereas, these older games—PS1, PS2, GameCube games—really never outstayed their welcome. If you play Wind Waker, you can complete that game in 10 hours. But that's just the best 10 hours. It's just such a condensed, concise, intentional experience, and I think that is similar to something like Fallout 1.
"I say Fallout 1 is my favorite Fallout game for a reason. Those kinds of PC CRPGs come in at maybe a slightly longer runtime, but they're really intentional and well-sculpted experiences that, maybe they don't take you as long as as a modern game, but you find you want to go back and replay them because they were that good, and there's just different ways to experience them, and all those mechanics are just polished and tightened to such an extent.
"I think that's what we're trying to do with Entropy, with the battle system and stuff. I'm trying to mix the simple battle systems of JRPGs, with maybe a slightly more high tactical approach of something like XCOM, or the original Fallout."
Elsewhere in our conversation, Wragg revealed that he's never beaten Breath of the Wild, and whenever he plays, he just wants to revisit 2002's Wind Waker instead. I find this issue much more acute on replays, in my own experience: I've never beaten BotW a second time after that initial playthrough where I got all the shrines (I was unemployed). More recently, I've found myself turning away from my beloved Elden Ring to the far more snackable Bloodborne and Sekiro.
Fallout is such a good shout here: I had a fairly completionist replay a few years ago, and I wrapped it in about 12 hours. Even the fact that Wragg's previous game, Dread Delusion, was open world isn't as much of a gotcha as you might think: It's a pretty dense map and boasts a roughly 15-20 hour runtime.
I find myself much more likely to stop playing a game without hitting the credits these days than to finish something and wish there had been more of it—and even then, the latter is a preferable feeling in my book. There will always be a place for long runners and sprawling open worlds in my heart, but not everybody gets to be Cyberpunk 2077 or Fallout: New Vegas, and that's what makes them special.
Entropy, meanwhile, feels like it has a massive world, at least from the slice of map I've seen. But being able to evoke scale without overstaying the game's welcome is something Lovely Hellplace already managed in Dread Delusion. If you're intrigued by Entropy and Wragg's approach to design, you can check out its free demo or $12 early access on Steam.
