Shiness, a combination of a fantasy role-playing game and a manga series, is the first effort from French indie studio Enigami, which is launching a $100,000 Kickstarter campaign for the project today.
Enigami created a fantastical world with its own fictional language, where various races live among islands floating in the sky. Players start out as a character named Chado who's searching for his friend Poky, a quest that leads into an epic journey across the celestial islands. Eventually, players will be able to put together a party of three characters from a group of five as they explore the realm.
According to Enigami, the inspiration for Shiness came largely from manga and anime such as Naruto and Dragon Ball, so Shiness' battle system draws from fighting games. Battles are one-on-one fights that take place within the world, and support characters on the edge of the area can provide assistance. In addition to standard melee combat, players will have to incorporate magic attacks into their arsenal if they want to succeed.
Along with the video game, Enigami is working on a Shiness manga series. Readers of the manga will pick up clues that will help them uncover hidden quests in the game. Quests will affect players' reputation, which changes the tenor of their relationships with NPCs, and players' actions have the power to change the world.
Enigami is aiming to launch The Lightning Kingdom, the first episode of Shiness, in the first quarter of 2015 on Mac and Windows PC, with PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions possible as well.