Prisma, an upcoming Persona-like indie JRPG, goes all multiverse theory by filling out your party with alternate versions of its camera-wielding protagonist
I recently had the pleasure of an early look at Prisma, an upcoming Persona-style RPG from the creators of Crisis Tales, which was an ambitious indie project with a big emphasis on time travel. While it didn't quite hit with our reviewer Alistair Jones at the time, I'm glad to see developer Dreams Uncorporated's back for another swing, because it's got something really interesting cooking.
Prisma is an upcoming JRPG with a shorter planned runtime than its inspirations, mercifully—I'm still recovering from my Metaphor: ReFantazio playthrough. It's got a multiversal bent on the concept: Instead of collecting Archetypes or Personas, you'll be gathering alternate versions of the protagonist, Alma. I'm told by CEO Carlos Rocha and CCO Jeff Cardenas that the idea was inspired by the classic JRPG pastiche of job systems:
«In RPGs, you can change those job classes, [so] we started thinking: If you change your clothes, it suddenly means that you can do black magic. That was always weird to us. So we thought: What if we actually make this into a feature of the game, where the other characters are other versions of you, with their own backstory, their own decisions made in their circumstances.»
Alma's a journalist living in Colombia—a country with, let's call it, a complicated relationship with journalism—who gets hucked into Domacon, a strange world filled with other versions of herself. Some ally with her, some fill the shoes of antagonists, and some just vibe out and run a shop. Hey, somebody's gotta do it.
The main Crisis Tales-style spin here has more to do with Alma's profession than it does her crew of what-ifs. Players will be able to make use of different camera lenses in its turn-based combat, which also uses a positional grid system. For example, a fish-eye lens will curve your party's attacks, allowing you to ignore the frontline of an enemy encounter—conversely, a cracked lens will fracture your attack into a bunch of different beams, acting as an on-demand AoE.
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