I’m all the time on the hunt for mecha video games of all sizes and styles. When Starbites was first revealed in November 2022, I’ve all the time saved an eye fixed on it. Developer Ikinagames not too long ago introduced that they’ve partnered with NIS America for its western launch in 2026; the sport might be coming to Japan this yr on October 16 with Happinet as its writer. I performed a demo construct of Starbites at PAX West 2025 and obtained to interview Ikinagames founder Junho Bae about it.
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Starbites revolves across the planet of Bitter, a once-bustling vacation spot for adventurous wanderers and pioneers. Interstellar warfare step by step deteriorated Bitter and now, it solely has one metropolis left – Delight; lots of its remaining residents are composed of troublemakers and fugitives. Lukida, the protagonist of Starbites, needs to interrupt free from her present life in Delight.
Every playable character in Starbites has their very own private Motorbot mech that they make the most of in battle. The PAX West demo had me discover a number of small linear zones with the occasional branching path for a treasure chest; it had an overhead digicam perspective and map that offered an excellent sense of the place to go to proceed ahead, and which routes led to elective loot. There have been station checkpoints that replenished my HP and SP.
Battles in Starbites resemble Octopath Traveler’s ebb and move, combined with somewhat little bit of Nihon Falcom’s Trails sequence. As much as three characters in battle face off in opposition to foes, and there’s a numerical defend worth quantity to the left of an enemy’s well being gauge; there are empty slots beneath a foe’s HP, as nicely. Every character is related to a special injury sort, reminiscent of Badger’s hammer doing blunt injury and Gwendoll’s sniper rifle inflicting pierce injury.
Starbites Characters & Gameplay System
By means of trial and error, the empty slots beneath an enemy’s HP bar will fill in to point that injury sort is one in all their weaknesses and it’ll lower their defend worth. Solely depleting their shields will immobilize them for a number of turns.
Characters will step by step enhance their Driver’s Excessive gauge as they inflict and obtain injury. Filling it up and utilizing it’s going to enable that character to behave once more instantly, no matter the place they’re on the motion order timeline. Whereas different RPGs have the same mechanic, the one which instantly got here to thoughts was the Trails’ sequence S-Crafts system.
There was solely a small pattern of Starbites on the present ground, nevertheless it obtained me intrigued to take a look at the total launch at any time when it comes out within the west. I nonetheless need to heat as much as the disparity between the idea artwork of characters and the way their in-game 3D fashions look; the latter reveals a extra Saturday morning-esque cartoon look, whereas the previous has a special slick vibe to it altogether.
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As I discussed earlier, I additionally spoke to Ikinagames founder Junho Bae relating to Starbites.
Junho Bae, the founding father of Ikinagames: At first, Ikinagames selected to announce Starbites as an indie recreation and since that point, we haven’t modified publishers. We have been nonetheless debating on both publishing it ourselves or partnering with a special firm to publish Starbites. NISA was the writer we selected and we have been launched to NISA as a consequence of underlying circumstances. I felt that Ikinagames and NISA could be a fantastic match collectively to launch Starbites.
Bae: For over ten years, there’s an organization we’ve labored with to create music tracks for our video games; they’re known as Producer dk. They create not solely recreation music, but additionally pop music so that they’re very skilled in composing issues which can be catchy. At the moment, they’re engaged on the BGM of Starbites with a Japanese composer.
Bae: Ikinagames as an organization has been energetic since 1995, and I needed to create an organization the place recreation lovers can create video games. With our earlier titles, our strategy is to place creators which can be particularly robust in sure genres; for instance with All of Us Are Lifeless…, we’ve put the workers which can be robust in writing eventualities because the core of that undertaking.
I really like JRPGs together with the remainder of the staff. Subsequently, we’ve labored on enhancing our growth information and skill and that allowed us to take a step into a special style.
Bae: Inside Ikinagames, Starbites has been the biggest undertaking we’ve labored on. The toughest lesson we’ve needed to undergo in creating Starbites is that everybody has completely different ideas and methods of decoding data. When constructing its battle mechanics, everybody’s definitions have been completely different on what was making an attempt to be conveyed so it was a technique of getting everybody on the identical web page to speak what we have been envisioning, pondering, and wanting. Nonetheless, the workers and I have been in a position to meet eye-to-eye after many discussions and visually verifying that what we have been seeing lived as much as what we have been expressing to at least one one other.
Bae: The primary element is a narrative that makes you’re feeling a sure manner; the second is enjoyable, difficult battles; and the third is growing your characters in a manner that makes them really feel like they’re your individual.
Bae: Constructing the turn-based battle system was one thing that we thought wasn’t going to be exhausting as a result of we had earlier expertise constructing these sorts of video games on cell, nevertheless it seems cell video games and not-mobile video games are very completely different. They every have quite a few elements that make them distinct from each other while you’re constructing the fight system for every. So despite the fact that I had prior expertise creating battles on cell video games, that have wasn’t one thing that could possibly be simply be transferred over in creating Starbites.
One thing I believed that was exhausting at first, however turned out wasn’t truly exhausting was map design. As we have been creating new maps and layouts, I used to be anxious that it was going to be tough to vary them as we continued to refine them; it seems that it wasn’t so unhealthy.
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Bae: Creating the world setting got here first, and I knew I didn’t need it to be a fantasy setting as a result of there’s a lot of that already. I felt that Starbites’ sci-fi world could be a key element in driving it.
Bae: There have been plenty of issues that impressed Starbites however a selected one I’d like to say is that the staff and I watched a selected Hatsune Miku music video that came about in a desert surroundings. That desert setting sparked our creativeness, particularly after we blended it into the sci-fi setting that we established.
(Editor’s notice: That is referring to Kenshi Yonezu’s 2017 tune Dune carried out by Hatsune Miku)
Additionally, we have been fascinated by the Dune film (the western IP) however we intentionally averted taking inspiration from it as a result of we really feel that taking an excessive amount of from it might deviate from our imaginative and prescient of Starbites. Akira Toriyama’s Sand Land and Dr. Droop have been massive inspirations, as nicely.
Bae: That is the primary time we’re difficult ourselves in constructing a JRPG. One thing we want is for our gamers to change into mates with the characters we’ve made. Our staff and I’ve a robust reference to the characters we designed and we hope to share that sentiment to all Starbites gamers.
