ΤΗΕ MAKING OF... DUNGEON ENCOUNTERS

From FF to 00 and back again: the story of a mountainous journey into the depths

- CHRIS SCHILLING

As director of Final Fantasy VI, IX and XII, three of the most revered entries in this storied series, Hiroyuki Ito's reputation precedes him, not least because of the impact his pioneering ideas have had on the JRPG genre. Final Fantasy V's Job system was Ito's work, as was FFXII's License Board. And so, most significantly of all, was the Active Time Battle system introduced in Final Fantasy IV- the idea of characters moving at different speeds inspired by Formula One cars overtaking one another.

It was another pastime entirely that inspired Dungeon Encounters. "I wondered if it would be possible to experience the trials of mountaineering while sat at home - a process where you set goals, gather the team, make a plan, hire a sherpa and then head up the mountain," Ito says. "From there, great obstacles and hardships await you on the climb." This description makes perfect sense once you've played the game; trust a maverick such as Ito to communicate those ideas through a game where your ultimate objective is not high above, but deep below.

The result, appropriately, is a game of great contrasts. Dungeon Encounters' stripped-back aesthetic presents your current party leader as a simple figurine, its labyrinth a rudimentary gridbased map on parchment, resembling a vast, incomplete crossword puzzle. At first glance, it is not, it's fair to say, the kind of game you would ordinarily expect from an affluent publisher, nor from the man behind several lavish RPGs. So how did Ito decide upon this visual approach? "I wanted to create a juxtaposition," he says, "where you have cutting-edge hardware and monitors that can create these incredibly beautiful visuals but have them showing graphics that do not require that capability. I think this was the best approach to the concept of this project."