Matthias Linda's seven year quest to make retro JRPG Chained Echoes

gamedeveloper.com:

This interview has been edited for clarity

Released at the end of 2022, Chained Echoes is an indie RPG that aims to capture the heyday of classic JRPGs from the 16-bit SNES era. Thanks to rave reviews and easy access via Xbox Game Pass (for those wondering, it's also available on PC, Switch, and PlayStation) it has quickly become something of a hidden gem for players seeking a heady dose of nostalgia.

Although the game seemed to materialize out of nowhere in the wake of a typically busy blockbuster holiday release schedule, Chained Echoes was actually the result of a seven-year labor of love for solo developer, Matthias Linda–though he reckons it could have been simmering away for longer. Especially if you include his teenage tinkerings in game design with RPG Maker, a game making tool that originated from Japan but became popular in his home country, Germany.

Graduating with the unusual combination of Modern Japanese and Communication Design, Linda got a job at an agency working on animation related to e-learning. "While I was doing this, I was playing around again with RPG Maker but still not at a professional level," he says. "At some point I thought, why not try out something like Unity? So I did some tasks and it was surprisingly easy without having much background. When I was younger, I made a few websites where I did some simple coding for PHP, so I knew the basics."

It was around then that the idea for an RPG that would eventually become Chained Echoes began to form. Although Linda admits he'd only made a few short games at that point, he did have experience with larger projects, with the budding creator having already penned lengthy crime fiction novels. "I was always the daydreaming type of guy," he says. "When