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Illusory Saga: Hanging on the Edge of Time
⊹ ࣪.⋆~⊹₊⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆✩࿐
Alex Tang & Steele Citrone
For MFA Thesis
Experience the last moments of a frozen world with your friends by your side in this JRPG-lite. Will you choose to end the journey from the start, or linger in a moment of respite in the face of uncertainty? Be careful, every step counts.
Interview:
✧ In one or two sentences, describe the main themes present in your game.
Illusory Saga: Hanging on the Edge of Time is a JRPG-lite that follows the daughter of Time and Space as she grapples with the limitations of time, confronts stagnation of the world and herself, and of course, learns the true power of friendship.
✧ What was the inspiration of the game? What made your team decide to make this game specifically?
We both grew up playing JRPGs from the mid-2000s, namely Steambot Chronicles, Kingdom Hearts II, and Tales of Symphonia, and found a true sense of comfort in these games that has persisted to this day. Many of these games have what we call hangoutitude, this feeling of peace in the mundanity despite the world threatening to end around you. We wanted to bring this feeling to focus and see if we could replicate it both for ourselves and to share with others.
✧ What were some of your most memorable moments from making this game? What did you learn from those moments?
There was a point early on in development where rather than developing a map system like that in Etrian Odyssey like he was assigned, Steele developed a nonogram minigame where you have to wait actual real-life minutes for answers to be revealed. We joke about that to this day. Other than that, we really loved being advised by working industry professionals: Oli Clarke Smith from Kaizen Game Works and Brendon Bigley, Stephen Hilger, and AJ Fillari from Into the Aether. Meeting with them opened our minds to new perspectives, and it was invaluable to our process.
✧ Talk about your teammates! What was everyone's role?
Team Hangoutitude is made up of Alex Tang and Steele Citrone, who shared all roles fairly equally. All of our pixel art and UI was designed and drawn by our friend, Jess Chu. We would also like to thank Patrick Trinh, Oli Clarke Smith, Brendon Bigley, Stephen Hilger, and AJ Fillari for being advisors on this project. Lastly, a shoutout to the MFA Class of 2026 with special thanks to Austin Burkett (with support from Achilles Jiang), Haoyang Li, and Maggie Wang for their audio and visual contributions. This game was made for us, by us, and the ones we love.
read the devlogs here
play this game on itch.io
bsky: @alexandraktang