TBT: The Black Tower is a 90s-style RPG inspired by Final Fantasy, giant swords

I occasionally get nostalgic for the PlayStation-era Final Fantasy games - a feeling that generally passes when I play a PlayStation-era Final Fantasy game and find my patience tested within the first minute. Having said that, I'm intrigued by TBT: The Black Tower , an upcoming RPG with more pre-rendered backdrops and oversized swords than you can shake a bunch of Gysahl Greens at. If you understood the reference, you may proceed past the break, where I will tell you more things about this French take on a very Japanese genre.

I'm assuming TBT stands for The Black Tower (but if so, why the subtitle?), however I know that it revolves around Yan Forté, "a kind of ranger" who lives in the woods in the year 2032. There's some business about a "strange alien Cube" and "Ellana, a young girl with a strange black Die as a pendant around the neck", but the three-person development team is going to need to shove a few more ancient gods, magical eight-year-olds and giant yellow birds in there if they're going to compete with the Final Fantasy series.

The Black Tower will have links to Simon Mesnard's ASA: A Space Adventure , a Myst-esque adventure game with a similarly loose grasp on the whole subtitle thing. TBT is still very early in development, but that doesn't mean you can't vote for it on Steam Greenlight , await the crowdfunding campaign in May, or watch the prototype video, below.

Thanks to IndieGames .

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.